


A Door Into Hope

by Lomonaaeren



Series: Children of the Sun [12]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Familiars, Gen, Mythical Beings & Creatures, background canon relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2019-08-05 03:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 31,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16359554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Harry is mustering more and more support for the changes he wants to make in the wizarding world as he returns to Hogwarts after his first Christmas holiday. But as some people begin to believe he can make those changes, others see him as a threat.





	1. January at Hogwarts

**Author's Note:**

> This follows directly on "The Secrets of Longbottom Manor," but will be considerably longer.

****Minerva stood behind the chair that had once been Albus’s and watched as the students filed in through the doors. Beside her were the professors that she would need to depend on for the rest of the school term. On the floor at her feet sat Malkin, her familiar, the glow of his bronze coat deep and reassuring as he leaned against her leg.

She only hoped it would be enough.

Shaking off the thought of what she had found among Albus’s notes, Minerva took her seat. Someone leaned over her chair, and she turned in surprise. It was Aurora Sinistra, the Astronomy professor, who usually didn’t approach her or ask for any favors, bar a disruptive student who needed to receive detention.

“Yes, Aurora?”

“I received a message from a—friend,” Aurora said, the hesitation in her voice long enough that Minerva raised her eyebrows. Aurora flushed and reached up to stroke the copper bat, Curio, who clung to her shoulder. “I need to talk to you about it. Can I see you in your office after dinner?”

Minerva nodded, faintly curious. Aurora had always stayed out of politics. Minerva had no idea who this mysterious friend could be. “Certainly.”

Then she had to rise to her feet and welcome the students back for another term at Hogwarts, and hope that none of them saw how tired or rattled she was. She still hadn’t been able to understand the meaning of the mysterious list of students and their familiars that she’d found in a locked drawer in Albus’s office. It went back decades, and the _Unnatural_ next to some of those names made her shiver as if she had a fever.

_What was he doing? And what happens if I never find out?_

*

“Well done, Harry.”

Harry halted and blinked at Cedric. They were walking into the Hufflepuff common room, and for some reason, Cedric had taken him aside and said he wanted to talk to him. But at least he could have said what it was about.

“Er, thanks? Why are you congratulating me, though?”

“Because Neville looks more happy and confident than he has since he came here, and I think you had something to do with it.”

“Well, I mean, I told his grandmother some things. But Neville is the one who stood up and decided to be more confident.” Harry looked over at his foster brother, who was waving his hands as he talked to a couple of the second-year Hufflepuffs about some spells he’d cast. The second-years were smiling.

“And I knew it was probably you. I tried to talk to Neville about being more confident and calmer earlier in the year, but he didn’t listen. I think you’re the only one who could make him listen.” Cedric bent down to rub behind the ears of Nebulous, his bronze leopard familiar. Nebulous rolled on his back and purred like an overgrown kitten. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Harry said, a little confused. He still thought that it wasn’t very complicated. He’d helped Neville get a new wand and think past the things his grandmother told him. That was it.

Cedric smiled at him as if he knew more than Harry was saying and walked towards the third-year staircase. Harry shrugged and caught up with Neville and Susan Bones, who gave him a faint smile.

“I heard you had an exciting Christmas.”

“It was good, but about normal in excitement, really.”

“Mouthing off to your guardian and going out to Diagon Alley on your own isn’t what I would consider _normal_.”

Harry blushed. “I didn’t mean to mouth off to Mrs. Longbottom, even. I just said some true things and she got angry. I know I probably wouldn’t get away with it if I didn’t have a golden familiar.”

“Well, maybe you did,” Susan said, unruffled. Camilla, her winged horse, sniffed her hair with a bronze muzzle and pushed it into Susan’s palm. Susan stroked her neck without taking her thoughtful gaze off Harry. “But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. We need someone who can get away with things if we’re going to do the—thing.”

Harry nodded. Susan was one of the people whose familiars had been willing to talk to Golden, so she was one of their people. “I know. But I hope that someday someone will question me instead of listening to me.”

“Just as long as it only happens after we have what we want.”

Susan nodded to him and went up the stairs to the first-year girls’ bedroom. The ceiling had had to be adjusted because Camilla was so tall, Harry knew. He shook his head a little. They could adjust buildings to different sizes of familiars, but they were so reluctant to accept that familiars shouldn’t make people be treated certain ways.

Well, he would make things better someday. He sat by the fire to wait for Neville (and to finish up the Charms essay he hadn’t _quite_ finished the night before).

*

“What is it, Aurora?”

Minerva was out of patience for delays. First Aurora had asked for tea; then she’d asked for lemon drops (and seemed shocked to hear that Minerva had got rid of them); then she’d admired some of the paintings on the walls that Minerva had replaced Albus’s odd winter landscapes with; then she’d asked after Minerva’s holidays.

Aurora took a deep breath and clasped her hands. Curio crawled down her shoulder and nestled under her chin. “I have a—a contact who I haven’t heard from in some time. I honestly thought I would never hear from her again. It’s dangerous for her to write to me. But she sent me a letter when she finally became convinced that Albus is never coming back.”

“All right.” Minerva felt the coldness in her stomach increase. She supposed she ought to have known that this was more likely to have something to do with Albus’s insane list than not.

Aurora reached into her sleeve and drew out a folded letter that she handed to Minerva. Minerva cracked the seal and read. The handwriting was thin and so slanting that it looked as though everything had been written with the parchment turned sideways.

_Dearest Aurora,_

_I don’t want to alarm you, and I don’t know when I can write to you again. But I heard that Albus Dumbledore is in a prison that might finally hold him, and that means I can say what he cost me._

_When I first came to Hogwarts, a few people were surprised at my silver familiar, but not many. After all, there were others here who had one, and my own family had had a long time to grow accustomed to it, and some of them had probably told others._

_I was questioned by Dumbledore, however. Apparently he knew my parents, and he felt as though someone with a tin familiar and someone with a bronze should not have produced a child born to the silver. And he also felt that my familiar’s “nature” did not fit my own, although I don’t know what that means._

_More than the questions, I remember the evening that he called me to his office, supposedly about an infraction I’d committed against the rules. I went, and found myself caught and bound in flames the minute I came into the office. His phoenix dived at me, and I screamed. I can’t tell you exactly what happened, just that my mind filled with more flames and it felt as if my_ soul _was burning._

_My familiar saved me, by spitting in the way you know he knows how to do. I broke free of the flames and ran out of his office. That was the end of my first term, and I told my mother that I wanted to go to Beauxbatons instead. She was astounded, but I insisted, and my parents sent me there the next year._

_It has been decades, but I never forgot that pain. In case this can be useful, I am sending it on._

_I will have to leave my sanctuary soon. I ask that you don’t try to find me._

Minerva lowered the letter slowly. “What does she mean by having her familiar spit?”

“Forgive me, Minerva, but if I told you that, then you might know how to find her, and I promised not to betray her trust. Her familiar is not a common one.”

Minerva looked into Aurora’s face and felt her words die on the tip of her tongue. Yes, Aurora avoided politics most of the time, but when she wanted to, she could play them with the best. She had been a Slytherin, and an extraordinarily stubborn one.

Malkin pranced up to Minerva and leaned his head against her side, purring. Minerva reached out and patted him gently, never taking her gaze from Aurora. “You believe her.”

“Of course. I don’t see the point in making up such a story. If she’d made it up, she might have shared it during the trial, when there was a chance that Albus could have been punished for more than what he did to Harry or the Aurors.” Aurora closed her eyes. “But she shares it now. Her life has been hard, Minerva. I think this was the first of many hardships. Please leave her alone, but use her words as you will.”

In the end, Minerva had to nod and watch as Aurora walked out of her office. She stayed close to Malkin, letting his purr soothe her.

_Merlin. I don’t know what to do now._

*

“Lucius. What a…surprise.” Severus dropped the pause into his sentence merely to watch Lucius’s eyes narrow. In truth, the way he spoke was no more complicated than that. “Was there something you wished to ask me?”

“Yes.” Lucius’s fingers closed hard on his cane, and he leaned forwards as if he would step out of the Floo. “I want to know whether you would call young Mr. Potter an adverse influence on Draco.”

“An adverse influence?”

“Don’t look so blank, Severus. You should know better than anyone how a wizard with a golden familiar can charm others into serving him.”

Severus drew back with a snarl. “Albus Dumbledore held me in chains of guilt. Not _influence_ in the way that you meant it, Lucius.”

“Then you should have no reason not to answer my question. Would you say that Mr. Potter is coming close to influencing Draco in a way he should not? Enslaving him in the way that Dumbledore tried to enslave those Aurors?”

“Of course not. It would never occur to Mr. Potter to use his power in such a way.” Severus had come close to saying “Harry.” He was glad that he was speaking more slowly than was his wont. “Come, Lucius,” he added, when he saw the frown. “Did you _truly_ expect me to say yes?”

“I did. Because we are concerned that our son is being influenced by him.”

“In what way?”

“Draco’s letters home to his mother are…strange. And he is defying our requests for information in a way that he never did before.”

Severus came nearer to smiling than he had to saying Harry’s name. He reached up and adjusted the position of Shadowstriker on his shoulder, calling attention to the serpent’s silver scales. Sometimes Lucius was too prone to forget that Severus was his equal, and tried to treat him like a servant. “I haven’t seen any sign of that. Draco is one of Mr. Potter’s friends, but only one of many. He doesn’t single Draco out or attempt to convert him in any way.”

“ _And_ that is wrong. A Malfoy should be the most important courtier surrounding one born to the gold.”

 _As if I didn’t know that you plan for Draco to be the lord, not the courtier._ “I would think that you would talk to Mr. Potter or Draco about it,” Severus suggested in a bored tone. “It’s not as though either of them trusts me with their innermost secrets. Mr. Potter is a Hufflepuff, not of my House.”

“All the more reason that he is unworthy of being followed,” Lucius muttered, and disappeared from Severus’s fire.

Severus allowed himself the luxury of rolling his eyes now that Lucius was no longer there. “You don’t know your son, and you don’t know _him,”_ he whispered to the dead fireplace, and went back to preparing for the upcoming term.


	2. Songleaper

Harry opened his bed curtains with a little yawn. He had planned to get up early this morning and spend some time working on his defensive magic with Golden, but he’d slept in, instead. He thought that was probably okay. There was nothing urgent—

Harry paused. There was a tin jackrabbit sitting next to his bed, staring at him with wide eyes. Harry had never seen a familiar so far away from their witch or wizard before. And he didn’t think anyone in Hufflepuff had a jackrabbit.

In fact, thinking about it, he couldn’t remember _anyone_ who had a jackrabbit.

“Um, hello?” he asked.

The jackrabbit leaped onto the bed and dipped its— _his_ , Golden hissed at him—head for a second. Then he reached out and leaned against Harry’s knee, shivering.

“Okay?” Harry stroked the jackrabbit’s flank, more and more baffled. He caught Golden’s eye, but Golden was quiet, coiled, still, which was a bad sign. Harry sighed. “ _Can you talk to him and find out what he wants?”_ he asked in Parseltongue.

Golden leaned forwards and stared into the jackrabbit’s eyes, using that silent language that most familiars seemed to use to communicate among themselves. Harry had rarely heard any trace of it, since he could really only “eavesdrop” when both familiars spoke Parseltongue.

Golden leaned back and spoke softly. “ _He does belong to a wizard, but one who works in the Ministry. His name is Songleaper. He has come to us because he is tired of helping to cover up his wizard’s crimes._ ”

Harry blinked and stared down at Songleaper, who looked up at him with huge, hopeful eyes. “Uh-oh,” he said.

*

Severus found himself keeping a protective hand on Shadowstriker’s back as he listened to Harry’s concerns, and the translation of Songleaper’s concerns into Parseltongue, which in turn meant that Golden translated them to Harry, and Harry to him. Shadowstriker had left him a few times last year when Harry wanted him to look around the school. Even being apart from his familiar for that long had left Severus feeling drained and irritable.

He knew there were people who used their familiars as messengers, especially if they had birds. He had supposed they must have a different kind of bond with their familiars than he did. Most of those birds were tin or copper, which traditionally meant that their bonds were viewed as less close.

But he couldn’t make that kind of assumption now, watching as the jackrabbit continued to lean against Harry. He had never heard of a familiar leaving their wizard’s side without intending to come back before.

Except it seemed that was what Songleaper had done.

Harry cleared his throat. He’d been translating, but Severus didn’t think that was the only reason his voice was hoarse when he asked, “What are we going to do, sir? Because Songleaper says that his wizard has been—changing Muggleborn wizards’ exam scores for _years_. How are we going to make that right?”

Severus looked into Harry’s eyes, and felt a twinge of shame. He had been contemplating how it would change things if familiars started making their own decisions, and Harry had already jumped over that as if he was the jackrabbit and started to consider how they were going to help correct injustices.

_That is one reason you swore that vow._

Severus sat up. “Harry,” he said quietly. “We will have to go slowly, not bring this out into the open all at once. We could do that with Dumbledore because Albus forced us to do that. But we will have to proceed carefully here, and collect other evidence for the accusations.”

“The familiars’ evidence—”

“There is no law that says evidence from a familiar can be taken against their own wizard,” Severus told him. “There is simply no precedent for it. They can testify _for_ us, the way that experts in the Wizengamot looked at those runes on Golden’s back and learned what your relatives had done to you from them. But against their own wizards, to say those wizards and witches are doing something wrong? That has never been done.”

“But that means it isn’t illegal, either, sir.”

“It isn’t. But courtrooms live and die by precedent, Harry. And if we managed to get an unsympathetic mix of men and women on the Wizengamot the day we went up in front of them, we would lose. I don’t think you want that.”

“An unsympathetic _mix_? Wouldn’t it just be the same Wizengamot that tried Dumbledore and my relatives, sir?”

Severus shook his head. “They trade lead positions. The same ones heard the cases relating to you, because they saw them all as interconnected. And the outrage was great enough that even someone more sympathetic to Albus probably wouldn’t have dared to vote against sentencing him to the Dream Labyrinth. But it would have been much different had you started out with trying to prove that, say, tin and copper familiars should be respected. You could have had someone who has a silver and doesn’t believe that, and been shot down.”

Harry bowed his head. Songleaper lay in his lap, ears flattened along his back. He looked up at Harry.

Severus saw the familiar clench to Harry’s jaw, and knew what he would say before he said it. “I have to try, though, sir. I can’t just leave familiars in bonds to wizards and witches they hate.”

Severus clenched his hand around the glass of water he had picked up while he listened to Harry’s explanation. “It is not that simple.”

“Why not, sir?”

At least the boy had learned to listen, instead of stepping disastrously off the cliff the way he had during the ritual to free Quirinus from Voldemort’s possession. Severus leaned forwards. “The familiar is bound to the magic, and some say the soul, of the wizard. You can’t simply _remove_ Songleaper without making someone a Squib.”

“Squibs don’t have familiars,” Harry said, as if to himself. “Right. I remember reading about that. That’s how everyone knows they’re Squibs when the familiars don’t come by the time they’re two years old.”

Severus nodded. “And I am not sure that you could sever the bond and leave the familiar _or_ the wizard alive. Familiars die when their wizards do. I know why Songleaper came to you for help, because you have a golden familiar and can communicate with him, and therefore more easily with Songleaper himself. But I cannot see a course forwards.”

Songleaper stood up on his hind legs, turned around, and touched his nose to Golden’s snout. Golden began to hiss softly. Harry listened. Shadowstriker reared up on Severus’s neck, and Severus gave him a brief concerned look.

But his own familiar only settled down when the hissing stopped, and Harry turned to face him again. “Songleaper doesn’t want to sever the bond, sir. He just wants to make sure that his wizard isn’t a hateful bigot.”

“And how do you suggest that we do that, given the problem with the testimony of familiars in court?”

“That’s one reason we need to talk to the others, sir. Maybe we can get some people on the Wizengamot who are more sympathetic to this kind of thing? Maybe some of them who have silver familiars and more power?”

“I fear you will find that most of those on the Wizengamot with silver familiars are like the Malfoys. Convinced of their own power and their place at the top of the hierarchy, since those born to the gold are so rare. Amelia Bones is a rare exception, but she does not control the Wizengamot. She is Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

“I know, sir. But there has to be _someone_. I get along with Mrs. Malfoy because she thinks she’s manipulating me and I’m really learning different things from her that she’s not teaching me. Is there someone like that we could approach? Or—” Harry hesitated for a moment. “Even the Malfoys themselves?”

“They do not hold a formal place in the Wizengamot,” Severus said, but he didn’t try to depress Harry’s pretensions the way he would have with most other suggestions. It was a good one. Lucius Malfoy had “lent” or “gifted” money to enough members of the Wizengamot, or their immediate families. Narcissa Malfoy could charm most of them. If they thought it was to their advantage to persuade or “persuade” a sympathetic person to step to the fore on a matter of familiar testimony…

And that ran him right again into the same problem. Severus sipped the water and eyed Harry. “They are foresighted enough to realize that they might stand to lose their place in the hierarchy if tin and copper familiars became more respected. Why would they help us?”

“I need to know more about what they’re afraid of,” Harry said, his forehead wrinkling. “I mean, besides that. I know they don’t want to change the hierarchy. But is there something else we could give them? Or pretend to give them?”

Severus bared his teeth. “There is indeed. I received a Floo call from Lucius Malfoy the other day, afraid that you are influencing his precious son.”

“Draco? But I would _never_ do that!”

“I know. Draco makes his own choices. But Lucius and Narcissa have little concept of that. They think that either you must be influencing him, or he must be secretly trying to get into position to influence you.”

Harry looked simply disgusted. “But _why_?”

Severus clenched his hand around the stem of the water goblet. _Albus, you should never have left him with abusive Muggles. But I will say this: that he does not understand the hierarchy will redound to the world’s benefit._ “Because to them, power cannot be shared. One person—or family—has it, and others do not. They never anticipated that someone new with a golden familiar would appear, of course. They knew how to work around Dumbledore.”

“But now they have someone who they think could influence Draco. The way Dumbledore influenced those Aurors?”

Harry looked distraught by the idea. Songleaper leaned more heavily against him, and so did Golden. Severus confined himself to a nod. “Yes.”

“So what could we promise them?”

Severus sat thinking for a few minutes, while Harry watched him with hopeful eyes. And the more he thought, the more the pieces fell into place. Yes, this could work, without any lying on Harry’s part. Harry was incredibly compassionate and intelligent for a child of his age, but still only eleven years old, and Draco would not lie to his parents much better. This plan would put the burden of the deception on Severus’s shoulders.

_And I can well bear it._

“I can go to them and tell them that you are politically naïve,” Severus said. “Firm in your ideas, which is why you want to press forwards this supposed nonsense of familiars testifying against their wizards in court. You might throw a tantrum if they oppose you, or someone else might snatch you up and use you against them. So their best course would be not to oppose you, but to permit this to happen. I will represent to them that they, and I, will subtly speak to Draco, implying how much he will lose if the hierarchy vanishes. This is the best way to detach Draco from you, or so they will think. Let your strange ideas happen, and Draco will have to realize himself that you are too radical and weak for him.”

“Do you think he really would?”

“I do not know.” Severus gave his honest opinion. “Draco is your friend, and he has been told all his life of the proper reverence for those with golden familiars. But he has also spent all his life being told that he is special for having a silver one. I suppose it will come down to his friendship versus his sense that he might lose his privileges.”

Harry nodded and looked down, stroking Songleaper for long enough that Severus wondered if he disapproved of the plan. “Harry?”

Harry sighed and looked back up. “I was just thinking that I started this out because I think everyone should be equal, and it was just _right_ that I not be treated special because I have Golden. Or, I mean, not treated in the way that everyone automatically bows down to me. But it’s going to involve making other people less special, too, right? And they might not like that.”

Severus thought of the spats he had witnessed in Slytherin House, the children from less prestigious families who clung to their bronze or silver familiars over others who had copper or tin, those born to the copper who turned away from those born to the tin, assumptions of great magical power for first-years who showed up with a silver and the way that some of them had been ruined by those assumptions.

“No,” Severus said, quietly. “They will not like that.”

Harry remained silent for some time. Then he looked up and said, “It’s still the right thing to do.”

“It is.” Even if for Severus it was only because of his oath, it would be happening.

“Then we should do it. Thank you, sir. Will you talk to Mr. Malfoy? And I can write to Mrs. Malfoy?”

“Yes, that is the best split. In the meantime, you have classes to get to, Harry. You must tell Songleaper to hide somewhere.”

Harry hissed to Golden, who spoke to Songleaper in the silent way, and the jackrabbit hopped off to conceal himself in a corner of Severus’s quarters. Severus stifled a sigh and stood.

He had the feeling that he was about to do much more annoying things for the cause than hiding a familiar in his quarters.


	3. Stealing Familiars

Harry went to his breakfast still thinking about Songleaper. Neville and Cedric both tried to talk to him, but Harry just smiled at them and went back to eating and thinking. Golden watched steadily from beside his chair, but there were no eggs this morning, and Golden curled up and sulked.

“Are you okay, Harry?”

Harry started and looked up at his foster brother. “Sure, Neville. I just learned something about familiars today that I need to think about.”

“Oh.” Neville turned quietly back to his own breakfast. Harry knew why. They couldn’t really speak openly of listening to familiars and encouraging them to change the hierarchy in the Great Hall. Harry patted Neville’s shoulder and left to be sure that he was on time for their first class, Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Professor Quirrell was already in the classroom when Harry wandered in. He looked up at Harry and nodded. He was still really pale, but he looked better than he had when Voldemort was possessing him. “What can I do for you, Mr. Potter?”

“I want to ask you some questions, sir. But I don’t want them to be insensitive. They might be.”

“Are they about my possession?”

“How did you know, sir?”

“There are very few other sensitive subjects that I think you might want to talk about, Mr. Potter.” Professor Quirrell laid aside the book on his desk and gave Harry his full attention. “Go ahead and ask. I’ll tell you if I don’t want to answer something, but there’s not much I would be willing to keep from you.”

Harry nibbled his lip. “Okay, sir. What—what was the possession like for you feeling your familiar? I mean, could you still feel and speak with her like normal, or did she seem far away?”

Professor Quirrell blinked a little. “When I felt more like myself, then it was as if she was on the other side of a wall. Our connection was distant, but it was there. When I was—when Voldemort possessed me most strongly, I felt a strong connection, but it was with _his_ familiar, Nagini, the one possessing Alanna.”

Alanna hopped up in Professor Quirrell’s lap as Harry watched and huddled close to him. Harry smiled at her. “I’m sorry I have to discuss this when you’re right here, but it’s important.”

“She won’t mind.” Professor Quirrell had a weird expression on his face, though, like _he_ minded. Harry hurried to ask questions before Professor Quirrell decided it was _too_ weird and stopped him.

“Do you think she could have avoided being possessed? Are people’s familiars usually possessed when they are?”

“I do not know if there has ever been a situation like this,” Professor Quirrell whispered, and it sounded like he was talking more to Alanna than Harry. “I do not know of any situation where a wizard has become a wraith like Voldemort became. Or taken his familiar with him instead of having it disappear.”

Harry nodded. He was a little disappointed, but he’d already thought that probably Voldemort would be unique. “If you’d _wanted_ the possession—”

“To a certain extent, I did.”

“I know, sir, but I mean, if you’d really disappeared into it? If you’d wanted it so much that your will became Voldemort’s?”

Professor Quirrell shuddered, and Alanna reared on her hind legs to nuzzle at his cheek. Professor Quirrell sighed and bowed his head so that his face was hidden from Harry’s. “I don’t like to remember how close I came to that. But yes. Say I did.”

“Do you think Alanna could have left you? If she thought you were evil and you would never come back, sir?”

Professor Quirrell looked up again and blinked. Then he looked down at Alanna. Alanna thumped her foot heavily down. Professor Quirrell looked back up.

“The loyalty of familiars is legendary, Mr. Potter.”

Harry looked steadily at him, and Golden reared up next to him. “That’s not an answer to my question, sir.”

Professor Quirrell made a watery sound like a laugh. “Yes, and you are persistent, Mr. Potter. Well. Let us say that I don’t think Alanna could have left me, but that’s because Nagini was possessing _her_ as well. I think that perhaps she might have if I had totally succumbed and somehow she had managed to avoid it, or if she had not been possessed.”

Harry nodded. “Thank you, sir.” Professor Quirrell was the only person he really knew who had suffered something like that and who might have had their familiar walk away. At least he didn’t think it was _impossible_ , the way Professor Snape seemed to think it was. Harry turned around to take his seat.

“Why are you asking this, Mr. Potter?”

“I met a familiar who’s thinking about walking away from his wizard, and I didn’t even know that was possible.”

Professor Quirrell sat up and stared at him. Then he said, “It is not,” in a sharp, decisive voice, at the same time as he reached up to touch the front of his robes. Harry wondered if he was gripping something underneath there. Maybe his wand? “There is no familiar that would walk away from his wizard without—there is none.”

“But this one might, sir. That’s why I wanted to know if you thought Alanna could have left you if she wasn’t possessed.”

Professor Quirrell bent down and smoothed his hand slowly across the middle of Alanna’s back. Alanna shivered and looked up at him with big eyes, Then Professor Quirrell said, “You don’t know what you’re saying, Harry.”

“I’m saying that I think it’s possible,” said Harry, and watched as Professor Quirrell gave a full-body shiver. “Are you all right, sir? Why does the thought upset you so much?”

“Because it is—unnatural.” Professor Quirrell spent a moment licking his lips. Then he said, “Do you know if this familiar’s wizard is possessed?”

“No, I don’t think he is.”

“Then this may be a trap.” Professor Quirrell leaned back in his chair and looked at Harry. He looked weary in the way that he hadn’t since he came out of the hospital wing and Madam Pomfrey said he could start teaching again. “Please keep that in mind, Mr. Potter. Perhaps it is not. But I have learned that something that seems tempting and too good to be true always is.”

Harry just nodded, because he wasn’t sure why Professor Quirrell would think that Harry would _want_ familiars to walk away from their wizards, and then took his usual seat in the front row of the classroom. Professor Quirrell went back to stroking Alanna. He didn’t look up again until a few other Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws started coming into the room, and then he stood up and tried to speak cheerfully.

“Hello, class. Today we will be studying the Disarming Charm…”

Golden reared up next to Harry and rested his nose on the tip of his elbow. Harry didn’t look at him, since Professor Quirrell was talking, but stroked the top of his head. It seemed Golden didn’t need anything. He just wanted Harry to know he was there, strong and steady as always.

*

“What am I going to do with you?”

Severus spoke wearily to the tin jackrabbit as he let Shadowstriker down off his arm into the corner by the fire where he usually slept. No one had come up and questioned Severus about anything to do with the jackrabbit; he hadn’t heard any rumors about a familiar leaving his wizard, either, or any hints at who Songleaper’s wizard might be. But the weight had been there all day despite that, as if the top layer of his mind had turned to stone.

Songleaper came hesitantly out of the shadows and sat up to stare at him. His eyes were huge and glistening, and Severus thought that if familiars could cry, he would have. He ended up lowering his head and rubbing his nose gently against Severus’s boot.

“I would not mind so much that you are here if you did not endanger the boy I have sworn to follow and protect,” Severus told the jackrabbit as he walked over to his small kitchen. Songleaper followed anxiously. “But you are here, and I know that Harry would never consent to let you go back to your wizard without doing something to change the situation.”

 _How_ was Harry going to change the situation, though? Severus frowned as he poured water for tea. Harry had plans to change the hierarchy, but they were ones that would work best gradually and over time, while this was an immediate situation.

Well, he had contacted Lucius to imply subtly that Harry was a politically naïve child and that Lucius would be best served by pretending to go along with Harry’s plans for now, then seize power in the future and use the “debts” Harry would owe him to get control over him. He couldn’t do more than that for right now.

As if on cue, the fire in his hearth flickered to life. Severus glanced at the green tinge in it and barely held back his swearing. He sat down in the chair that faced the hearth and sipped his tea. “Open,” he told the Floo.

In seconds, it did, and Lucius’s face floated in the flames, next to the lowered head of his wyvern Hecate. “Severus! I did catch you by yourself. I wanted to say that I had the most _interesting_ message from Harry Potter today.”

“Did you?” Severus made sure to keep his face mild and interested, no more.

“Yes.” Lucius almost purred the word, and Severus could see the edge of one hand curl as though Lucius was clutching at an invisible pillow. “Or rather, my wife did. He said that he wasn’t sure of himself, and he needed people to guide him through this new world. It’s what Narcissa had already suspected, but Potter hadn’t come right out and said it before. He needs us. He needs our leadership. And it is much more likely now that Draco will control him instead of follow him, given that he’ll see Potter relying on us for guidance.”

 _Or he will be Harry’s friend, the way that he and Harry both want it to be._ But Severus preserved a bland countenance as he nodded. “That is grand news indeed, Lucius. You will be in a position to influence perhaps the most important and powerful person to enter our world in three generations. Congratulations.”

Lucius gave him a condescending smile that made Severus want to strike out, but he kept his hands in their relaxed position. “Indeed. And we will not forget you, old friend. I promise. When we have risen to the top of the ranks as Harry Potter’s adoptive family, you will have an adjacent position.”

“Adoptive family?” Severus allowed his voice to be delicate. “I was under the impression that Augusta and Neville Longbottom filled that role.”

“For the present, they do.” Lucius flicked his fingers now as if dismissing dust. “But the boy barely knows them. The Longbottom woman made no move to reclaim custody of him even when she knew that he had survived. Why should he spend time with them and consider them family? He will spend more time with Draco soon, he will…”

After that, Severus only bothered to pay attention to the words so that he could revise them in a Pensieve later. He nodded and made the right noises, and realized when Lucius disappeared from the fireplace that his grip had cracked his teacup.

He glanced towards the shadowy corner where Songleaper hid and watched him with a quivering nose and brilliant eyes.

“I still don’t like it that Harry has to intervene to protect you and your wizard,” he told the jackrabbit. “But when I see the nature of the people who are currently in power, neither can I blame him.”


	4. Managing Impressions

"Songleaper! Where are you?"

Songleaper came bolting out of the corner of Professor Snape's rooms and jumped into Harry's arms. Harry laughed a little, but he was thinking how much Songleaper's wizard must be missing him. Or was he? It seemed a little strange that Harry hadn't heard anything, or that someone hadn't noticed.

 _Then again, maybe they're talking and I just don't hear them because I'm at Hogwarts._ Harry cuddled Songleaper closer to him and turned around to walk over to the fireplace. He was going to Floo to the Headmistress's office. Professor Snape thought it would be a good idea to talk to her about it.

When he arrived in the office, he gasped a little. Professor McGonagall looked awful. She tried to smile at him, but it didn't work. Even Malkin looked droopy, even though he came over and rubbed against Harry and Golden.

"Are you all right, Headmistress?"

"One form of bad news." Professor McGonagall stared at Songleaper. "And it seems that you have come to give me more. Whose familiar is that, Mr. Potter?"

"I don't know for sure." Harry set Songleaper down on the floor. He hopped around, although sometimes he almost bumped into things because he kept one eye on Malkin all the time. "I just know that his wizard is someone who's in charge of exam scores. He keeps changing them, and Songleaper left him because that's wrong."

Professor McGonagall shut her eyes really slowly, and pinched her nose even more slowly.

"Sorry, Headmistress," Harry said sheepishly. She looked the way Aunt Petunia did when he upset her sometimes, but he cared a lot more about Professor McGonagall than he did about Aunt Petunia.

"This seems like it is hardly your fault, Mr. Potter. But I assume you want something to happen with this jackrabbit's familiar, or you wouldn't have come to me in the first place."

Harry nodded. "Professor Snape said that familiars can testify for their wizards in a courtroom, but there's no pre- _precedent_ for them testifying against them." Harry was proud of himself for remembering that word. "What do we need to do so Songleaper can testify against his wizard if he wants to?"

"You never bring me the small problems, do you, Mr. Potter."

Harry hung his head a little, but he also watched Professor McGonagall from under his eyelids. No, it wasn't a small problem, but he was also doing what everyone kept telling him he should do, going and telling adults. Now they had to do something about it.

Professor McGonagall thought for long moments while Malkin stalked in circle around her, and Harry waited. Then she reached for what looked like a book, but wasn't. Harry examined it curiously as she held it out towards him. It looked like some paperwork that Uncle Vernon brought home from his office sometimes. Harry thought they were called ledgers.

"What is this, Professor McGonagall?"

"A list of effects that Professor Dumbledore made. He said they came from having a golden familiar. I want you to read it and tell me if any of it is familiar to you."

Harry looked carefully at Professor McGonagall, but she didn't sound as if she was making a joke. He opened the ledger and looked down at the page. He had to concentrate since the handwriting was so scribbled.

_The ability to see clearly into the distance._

_The ability to dream and see the dreams come true._

_More powerful magic than anyone else._

_The glimpse of a wizard's soul as expressed in a familiar and the ability to tell which color it should be._

There were more, but none of them looked to Harry like things he'd thought or felt. He shook his head. "I don't have dreams that come true or really good sight, Professor, sorry." He touched his glasses. "I don't even really know what he means by being able to tell which color a familiar should be. Mr. Ollivander is the only person I met who seems to have a familiar that's two different colors sometimes."

Professor McGonagall looked surprised for a second, but then she sighed and nodded. "I should have suspected you wouldn't share anything in common with Professor Dumbledore, Mr. Potter. It seems that some of what he was talking about was metaphorical."

"You mean he was lying, Professor?"

Professor McGonagall laughed, but Harry thought she looked as if she didn't _want_ to be laughing. That was familiar from Mrs. Longbottom, who didn't want to look as if she thought Harry's jokes were funny. "Perhaps, Mr. Potter. Or perhaps he meant that he had some sort of vision to change society and dreams to support that, rather than actually having prophetic dreams." She took back the ledger and closed it. "Now. We shall have to see what we can do about your jackrabbit."

"Someone else's jackrabbit, Professor," Harry corrected her. He was still thinking about the fact that some people might think he was stealing familiars. "Just Golden is my familiar."

Professor McGonagall nodded and closed her eyes. Malkin leaped up on her shoulder and began to purr. It was an odd, singsong purr, though, which sounded almost like humming, and Songleaper got big eyes and hopped closer to her chair, standing up on his hind legs so he could look at her and Malkin.

Harry didn't interrupt, but he watched in interest. He supposed this was something you could do with your familiar that was like a spell. And Professor McGonagall did take out her wand and gesture sharply with it after a second.

Songleaper glowed softly bronze. Harry perked up. Was there a spell to change a familiar's color? That would _really_ prove that the hierarchy was nonsense and sometimes tin familiars could be just as powerful as silver ones.

But instead, Professor McGonagall stopped casting and Malkin stopped purring, and the bronze glow faded from around Songleaper. Professor McGonagall sagged back in her chair. "A spell to determine whether Songleaper was telling the truth," she said, when Harry peered at her. "It can't do anything except show the truth. It doesn't show things like who his wizard is. But it does prove that he was telling the truth about wishing to leave his wizard and testify against him."

Harry ignored the temptation to say that he _knew_ Songleaper was telling the truth. Professor Quirrell had been the one who thought Songleaper was a trap, but Professor McGonagall must at least have suspected, because she'd done that. "Was that a ritual, Professor McGonagall? I read about them! You do them with your familiar when you don't have the power to cast some spells, right?"

Professor McGonagall blinked at him, then smiled. "Of course. You have friends in Ravenclaw House, don't you?"

"Hufflepuffs can do research, too, Professor McGonagall," Harry said, a little offended. He didn't want people to go by House stereotypes. That was stupid, just like believing all tin and copper familiars were weak was stupid.

"Of course, Mr. Potter. It's simply that they often neglect it." Professor McGonagall sat up. "So. We need to speak about this familiar. But the spell was like a ritual, yes. As you become better at magic, you will find that you can cast many spells by raising magic with your familiar and then casting it through your wand. That was why I didn't have to speak. Most verbal spells are for students who are just beginning their studies, weak spells that don't need much power, or wizards and witches who don't have that much power to begin with."

Harry nodded. "Am I going to be able to do that, Professor McGonagall?"

"Of course, Mr. Potter." She looked surprised that he was even asking. "You have a golden familiar."

"That doesn't _mean_ anything, though." Harry wanted to stomp his foot, but he thought it might make him look childish, so he didn't. "And if that spell you used was so simple, Professor, why didn't Professor Snape use it?"

"Of course Severus is involved in this."

"He is." Harry didn't back down or look away. Professor McGonagall knew about things like Professor Quirrell being possessed. Harry didn't think she was going to turn her back on them or betray them.

"Different pairs have different strengths. Malkin has always had some ability to test for truth." Professor McGonagall scratched her familiar's back and then gave Harry a very stern look. "I expect you to keep this to yourself. He helps me detect lies, although he can't do it for familiars the way he can for humans. That's why I had to cast the spell. But it does unnerve people that he can do that."

"I understand, Professor." Harry looked at Songleaper. "I'm going to get good at keeping secrets."

"And we still need to determine what to do with him." Professor McGonagall shook her head. "I am willing to look for his wizard in secret, Mr. Potter. It is most likely someone with the Wizarding Examination Authority. But in return, I will want you to tell me if you plan to make a radical move like telling people that you have Songleaper here with you."

Harry beamed at her. He _knew_ some adults could be trusted! Professor McGonagall was really different from Aunt Petunia after all. "I promise that I'll tell you, Professor. I think Songleaper wants to stay hidden for now anyway."

Professor McGonagall nodded slowly. "I think you are likely correct."

*

When Harry had left, Minerva picked up the ledger she had handed him again and leafed through the pages to the back ones, the ones that she had thought about having Harry look at, and then given up on.

_I alone have the ability to see a wizard's soul and whether the familiar reflects that soul._

Minerva shook her head. It wasn't even impossible that a familiar, especially a golden one, had the ability to see into people's souls. As she had told Harry, familiars did sometimes have special abilities, not connected to the magic they helped their wizards perform, but often connected to the accidental magic they helped their wizards express as children. Minerva had known when people were lying to her from a very young age, thanks to Malkin's confirmations.

She also had the ability to resist Veritaserum, something she did _not_ advertise. It made sense that Albus would have kept quiet about the ability to see souls, if that was really Fawkes's special gift.

But other comments in the ledger made her fear it was more than that. Minerva flipped a few more pages and stared at yet another list. She had found list after list since she had managed to open Albus's locked drawer, starting with Hogwarts students but not stopping there. It also included current Ministry officials, members of the Death Eaters, a great many dead people, and all of the staff and teachers of the school.

Minerva's hands tightened on the ledger as she stared at the well-known names. Malkin brushed against her and purred to offer comfort, but Minerva only touched him mechanically.

_Why does Severus Snape have a silver familiar? The serpent shape makes sense, given his Slytherin Sorting and his general sly temperament. But he does not seem the sort who would need the power of a silver familiar to help him grow or defend himself, and hardly the sort who would make one of the leaders of society. There seems to have been a mistake here. I must investigate._

_Sybill Trelawney's familiar disturbs me. On the surface, it makes sense. She has little true prophetic ability, but it does exist, and owls are associated with visions of the future. Copper matches her apparent strength, as well. But tin would match her strength better, and her owl appears to help her in her feigning. This must be investigated._

Minerva sat back, shaking her head. Albus's notes did not help her understand him. Neither did Harry's perspective as someone with a golden familiar. She would have to seek out other sources of information and hope they would speak to her.

And she would start with Aberforth Dumbledore.

"You," she told the tin jackrabbit, who was snuffling about in the corners of her office, "may stay if you wish, but you are only a small part of a much larger problem."


	5. Medwyn

"I want to talk to you, Potter."

Harry nodded. He knew this boy was older than he was and a Slytherin, but that was all he really knew about him. And the only reason he knew _that_ was because the boy was pretty tall and had a Slytherin tie. "Okay. What do you want to talk about?"

The boy stared at him for a second. Then he glanced back as if to check that his bronze peacock was still at his heels before he faced Harry. "You--you don't start the conversation out in the open like this, Potter!"

Harry didn't think they were in the open. They weren't outside. They were at the top of the staircase that led down to the dungeons. Harry had Potions in a second. "Okay. Then where do you want to talk?"

The boy stared at him again. Harry shifted. He didn't want to make Professor Snape angry, and that was worth a little more to him than not making this boy angry.

Finally, abruptly, the boy nodded. "Okay. Okay." He sounded as if he was talking more to himself, but Harry couldn't do anything about that. "Meet me in the library after your Potions class, okay? I have a free period."

"All right," Harry said, and went down the stairs with Golden crawling next to him.

He ran into Draco at the bottom of the stairs, who scowled at him. Harry blinked. He usually had to do something more than just walk around to get that expression from Draco. "What?"

"Wychard just ordered you around as if you were worth less than the scum on his boots," Draco said flatly. "I want to know why you give in and do what people like that say when you have a golden familiar."

"Of course I want people to be polite to me," Harry said patiently as he made his way towards the Potions classroom. Draco was supposed to turn and go outside to Herbology, but he stubbornly lingered. "But he wasn't ordering me around. And I'm not worth more than other people just because I have Golden. We discussed this, Draco, remember?"

"You're not worth _more,_ but you're not worth _less_."

"Yes, I know." Harry blinked at him. "What about it?"

"He was--he just acted like..." Draco deflated kind of like a balloon that Dudley had got on his birthday once.

"He acted like he was worth as much as me," Harry said. "Or he acted too arrogant for someone who has a bronze familiar. That's what you were about to say, wasn't it?"

Draco winced. "Yes, all right. His name is Wychard Medwyn, and his familiar is Curtis. At least be careful with him, all right? His family has a reputation for doing whatever they want and leaving other people to pay the price."

"And the Malfoys don't?"

Draco straightened so fast that Harry was surprised his spine didn't crack. "I've never done something like that!"

"But you can see what would happen if someone judged you by your Malfoy ancestors," Harry pointed out mildly, and shook his head a little when Draco sagged. "I'm not going to. I'm just saying that I won't judge Wychard by his Medwyn ancestors until he gives me a reason to make me think he does whatever he wants and leaves other people to pay the price."

"So _fair_. Bloody Hufflepuff."

"Bloody Slytherin," Harry commented with a small push to Draco's shoulder. Then he went to Potions.

*

"What did you want to talk to me about, Medwyn?"

Medwyn stared at him and then narrowed his eyes. "That little rat Malfoy told you about me."

"Draco has a dragon, not a rat," Harry corrected him as he sat down at the library table Medwyn was sitting at. It was in the very back of the shelves, surrounded by stacks of books on Alchemy that almost no one ever came to check out. Curtis stood with his tail puffed out next to Medwyn's chair. Golden looped himself around the table leg and watched Curtis curiously.

"You know I was trying to insult him, right?"

"Draco is my friend. Why would you insult him if you want to talk to me?"

Medwyn seemed to struggle with that for a second. Then he tossed his floppy brown hair out of his eyes angrily. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. What _matters_ is that golden familiars are supposed to have talents no one else does."

"Yes. But I won't take advantage of people the way Professor Dumbledore did," Harry reassured Medwyn.

"I'm not _talking_ about that! I'm talking about you being able to do things no one else does! Like find a familiar that's gone missing!"

Harry paused. It seemed that perhaps the problem with Songleaper had come to find him before he could find Songleaper's wizard. "What do you mean?"

"One of my cousins who works in the Ministry has had his familiar go missing. I don't _understand_ it. It's not like one can just wander away! But he hasn't seen his familiar in almost a week. He thought he was just sulking, but now he knows that's not true, and he needs him back!"

Harry took a deep breath. "What's your cousin's name?"

"Logan Medwyn. His familiar is a tin jackrabbit called Songleaper."

No hiding from the truth, then. Harry had to decide what he was going to do, and he needed to talk to Professor Snape and Professor McGonagall. But he needed to find something out first. "Is your cousin sure that he didn't do something that would just make his familiar hide from him? Or that Songleaper isn't hiding in his house or in the Ministry?"

"Of course he's sure, Potter! He's looked everywhere. Familiars don't just hide from their wizards this long even when they're sulking, everyone knows that."

"You didn't answer my first question."

Medwyn blinked several times. "Of course he wouldn't do something to his familiar. You don't _do_ that." For a second, his hand hovered protectively over his familiar's back.

"And he wouldn't have yelled at his children or anything like that? Nothing Songleaper disapproved of?" Harry felt like a hypocrite asking the question. He knew exactly why Songleaper had left his wizard. But he still had to ask.

"No. My cousin is a very gentle man."

 _Who just happens to be prejudiced against Muggleborn students, it sounds like._ But Harry had to lie for right now. He nodded. "Okay. I'll do what I can. But I grew up in the Muggle world, you know. Most of what I did was accidental magic under Golden's control. We might have to work for a little while to find a spell that would locate Songleaper. He might even go home before then."

"My cousin doesn't seem to think so." Medwyn hesitated for a minute. "Thank you, Potter."

"Don't mention it." Harry stood up. He had Charms next, and then lunch, and he didn't know if he would be able to catch his professors then. It might have to wait until this evening. "Golden?"

Golden eased back from some intense staring at Curtis, and nodded to Harry. They left the library and walked and slithered down a corridor. Then Golden spoke softly in Parseltongue. " _Curtis is willing to speak to us._ "

Harry swallowed. Most of the familiars they'd talked to so far had come to talk to them because their wizards or witches were friends with Harry, not the other way around. This sounded like Curtis maybe wanted to get away from Medwyn, too. " _Did he say anything about his wizard?"_

" _He said he would not want his wizard to know._ "

Harry set his jaw. So, yeah. They would have to talk to Curtis without Medwyn knowing, the way they would need to talk to Songleaper without _Logan_ Medwyn knowing.

And Harry had no idea what to do next. But that was why he was going to talk to the adults, and to Songleaper. Sooner or later, someone other than him had to have ideas.

*

"Why is that the situations you bring me seem to spiral outwards constantly and become more complex, Mr. Potter?"

"Sorry, Headmistress."

Severus leaned against the wall with his arms folded and watched Minerva look at Harry with a weary expression. But it was still less weary than it had been last year when they were dealing with a disciplinary matter involving Gryffindors and Slytherins. He thought Albus's absence had been good for Minerva in ways that she had not yet noticed.

If nothing else, the one person in the castle who now had a golden familiar would not insist on being told about every single motion of the parties involved, and going over and over things to make sure that no Gryffindor was unfairly punished.

"So you know for sure whose wizard Songleaper is." Minerva looked towards the shadowy corner near the fireplace that had held the jackrabbit when Severus came in, but it was empty now. "All right. And young Mr. Medwyn wants you to find Songleaper for his cousin. And _his_ familiar wants to speak with you privately as well."

"What could be going on, to have two of them from the same family?" Severus asked quietly. Minerva would understand what he meant better than Harry, although from Harry's quietly darting eyes, he was remembering and absorbing as much as he could to take back and ask his friends. "Could they be practicing the Forbidden Arts?"

"Surely they wouldn't ask someone else to find a missing familiar if that was it."

"Missing familiars aren't supposed to be _possible_. And they might think Mr. Potter too young to understand what he was seeing if he observed the Forbidden Arts."

"What are the Forbidden Arts?" Harry asked, in a voice that made Severus forcibly remember that he _was_ eleven and disliked being ignored even by adults that he had to know were on his side.

Severus watched Shadowstriker coil up in front of the fire and waited for Minerva to answer. He had nearly fallen into the Forbidden Arts himself when he was a Death Eater. The mention of them were still too near his heart for him to sound rational when he spoke of them.

"They are the means of corrupting a familiar," Minerva said at last, and from the sound of her fingers, she was tapping them rapidly on her desk. Then came the soft thump of paws that would be Malkin hurrying over to nuzzle against her hand and stop it from moving. "Using a familiar as a means of growing your power, rather than a partner or a vessel for that power."

"Even using it as a vessel sound pretty horrible, Headmistress."

"Yes, but not as horrible as the Forbidden Arts. And I should not even be speaking of them to a student."

Severus felt well enough to turn back then. "He will need to know about the general concept of them, Minerva. Mr. Potter, you should not accuse the Medwyns of such a thing until we know for sure. It would be _highly_ inappropriate and wildly illegal to make such an accusation without proof. I only suggested it because it is unusual to find two wizards in one family who would make one familiar walk away and the other willing to meet to talk in private without him."

"I understand," Harry said, but his eyes were on fire. "A lot of people see familiars as objects, don't they? Not beings capable of interacting with them. Not people with magic. Not creatures they should treat with _respect_."

Severus hesitated before he answered. Minerva had said that Harry's ideas spread and spiraled. This would get them all involved in a huge campaign for justice if they were not careful. "That is true in a sense, Mr. Potter. Golden and silver familiars tend to be more respected in their own right. However, even that encourages some people with familiars those colors to offer disrespect to those born tin, copper, and bronze."

"I'll meet with Curtis privately and see what he wants to tell me, sir. Is there something we can do for Songleaper right now? I mean, not find out if his wizard is practicing Forbidden Arts or anything. Just something."

Minerva traded glances with Severus. He could read her impulse in her face. She wanted to go to the Ministry with Songleaper and see exactly what his wizard acted like when he saw his familiar.

But Songleaper had come to Harry for help, and he would not allow them to simply return the jackrabbit to his wizard without opposition. Opposition that Severus, at least, could not offer, not when he was bound to Harry by his oath.

Minerva finally said, "I will continue to protect him and hide him, Harry. In the meantime, I will write a letter to his wizard. There _is_ one thing I could speak with him about without telling him Songleaper is here. Notes that Albus left behind. He knew Mr. Logan Medwyn as he knew most of the wizards and witches in our world. I would like to tell him what those notes say, and see his reaction. We may be able to get an idea, through his responses, of why Songleaper left him."

From the disgusted, weary hollowness in her face as her hand rested on a huge ledger, Severus knew that notes were not all Albus had left behind. But he would be content to wait and let Minerva tell him and Harry her secrets when she had time. He would rather that Minerva deal with Albus's legacy than do it himself.

Even if he suspected that he would eventually have no choice.


	6. Secret Meetings

“This is the place that Curtis is supposed to meet us?”

Golden curled his neck into half a heart shape and bobbed his head up and down. Harry looked around, a bit nervous. They were close enough to Ravenclaw Tower that someone could run into them if they were patrolling, like a prefect, or coming back from the library.

But a minute later, Medwyn’s peacock came hurrying into sight, his tail drooping and his neck bowed. Harry felt a stab of pity. He glanced at Golden. “What did he want to tell us that he didn’t want his wizard to overhear?”

Golden spoke softly to Curtis, flicking his tail and gesturing back and forth with his head. A few of the things he said were in Parseltongue, but not many. Harry glanced up sharply when he heard something down the corridor.

The sound didn’t repeat, though. Harry turned back to Curtis and Golden when Golden hissed softly at him.

“ _He says that his wizard’s family is researching using their familiars as vessels._ ”

Harry blinked. “Vessels for what?”

“ _Curtis doesn’t know. Medwyn always hides the books when he comes near. He doesn’t want Curtis and the rest reading over his shoulder. Curtis only heard the word ‘vessels’ a few times. He doesn’t even know for sure if it’s negative._ ”

“It sounds negative to _me_ ,” Harry said firmly. “It sounds kind of like some of the things I heard about people using their familiars as tools.”

Golden lowered his head so that he could flick his tongue out and gently touch Curtis’s clawed feet. The peacock stopped dancing up and down, and relaxed a little. “ _It sounds negative to me as well. But once again we have only a suspicion and not much to go on. Perhaps we could search for the word ‘vessels’ in books in the library._ ”

Harry nodded. Then he turned around because there was another noise from down the corridor. This time, it sounded like someone was almost running towards them. Curtis leaped up and fluttered down towards the dungeons.

“ _Golden? Can you hide me, like you did before?”_

Harry spoke almost instinctively in Parseltongue, and he heard Golden’s delighted hiss as he wrapped himself around Harry’s legs. “ _Yes. Hold still and try to think sneaky thoughts._ ”

“ _Like what?”_

“ _Shadows. Breezes. Mice._ ”

Harry closed his eyes and thought as hard as he could of breezes, and the way they would blow through your hair, and sometimes you didn’t notice them until it was too late and the breeze was past, and the shadows in corridors in Hogwarts that no one ever walked—

Magic rose up around them, sparkling white through Harry’s eyelids. It was the same magic Golden had used to hide them when they were walking through the school from the Hufflepuff common room to Ravenclaw Tower. Harry felt as though someone was sparking things through his body, playing him like a keyboard Dudley had once had.

“ _It is done_.”

Harry opened his eyes confidently. He knew that no one would hear their Parseltongue or their English as long as the magic was wrapped around them, either. It felt like standing in the middle of a cool block of mist that moved with them.

The person running up the corridor was a black-haired Ravenclaw girl with a long-legged copper dog trotting behind her. She muttered something as she rushed past Harry that sounded impolite. Well, if her familiar couldn’t keep her invisible, Harry supposed that she was kind of entitled to be upset.

“ _Why is your magic so different from other familiars’?_ ” Harry asked quietly as they came down the last set of stairs. “ _Is it really just your color_?”

Golden was quiet himself, but Harry didn’t think he was going to refuse to say anything. He was just thinking about the best way to explain it. And he did it, once they were back in the Hufflepuff common room and sitting in front of the fire.

“ _The magic that sends us to wizards—that isn’t the right word, but let’s say it is for right now—knows what they need. We become the kind of animal and the color that’s right for their life.”_ Golden lifted his head so that Harry was looking into his face. “ _But we also help our wizards learn magic because of the way we grow up with them. I think a lot of the other wizards who grew up in this world have their magic limited by their imagination._ ”

Harry frowned at him. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“ _They know that their parents need their wands to cast spells, so they think they do, too. The more intense ways of working with familiars aren’t visible to everyone, and they only happen for some adults as they grow up. But you grew up in the Muggle world. You didn’t know everything that was possible or impossible. So you and I did magic that was instinctive and what you needed at the time._ ”

Harry nodded, thinking about the time Golden had turned his uncle’s car into a donkey to prevent Harry from being hit. “So everyone could learn to do magic like ours if they just thought about it and believed it was possible?”

“ _It would need time and training, or untraining. But yes, they might be able to._ ”

Harry sighed. “So I suppose that’s something else we have to do, in addition to finding out how to help Songleaper and stop Voldemort and upend the hierarchy.”

“ _We can work on it more in the morning._ ” Golden reared up enough that he could nudge Harry’s hand. “ _For now, go to bed so that you don’t fall asleep in the chair in front of the fire like last time._ ”

*

“Thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Medwyn.”

“I hope that I can help you, Headmistress, and then return to the Ministry. Honestly, I can’t spare that much time away from it with my familiar missing.”

Minerva studied Logan Medwyn carefully as he sat in the chair across from her. He was a slim man with a heavy jaw that he looked as if he thrust out in front of him often. He had flat blue eyes, and Minerva could see from the bristling fur on Malkin’s back that her familiar didn’t care for him. She soothed Malkin to stillness next to her and drew out a sheet of Albus’s notes, trying to ignore how strange it was to talk to someone who didn’t have an animal sitting next to him.

“I discovered some notes left behind by the former Headmaster when I took over this office,” Minerva said, and laid out the notes that detailed Medwyn and his jackrabbit. “Can I ask you to look over them? These mention your name.”

“ _What?_ And Songleaper’s?” Medwyn leaned forwards. “That’s ridiculous! I certainly never had a private conversation with the Headmaster that would warrant this kind of extensive note-taking. I barely even got into trouble as a student!”

“I don’t think Albus took notes just on students that he had private conversations with. He seemed to take an intense interest in almost everyone who came through Hogwarts. Can you tell me if the last line is true?”

Medwyn turned the paper and then barked derisive laughter. “Certainly not, Headmistress! The Hat never considered me for any House but Slytherin. For the Headmaster to say that I didn’t _seem like I belonged there…_ it’s ridiculous.”

Minerva nodded. “I suspect that perhaps some of this was Albus getting more senile in his old age.”

“He would have to be, to use spreading magic on people to try and control them.”

The conversation with Medwyn didn’t last much longer after that. He had no valuable insights to offer, and he also didn’t seem like the sort of evil incarnate that Minerva thought a wizard would have to be to make his familiar leave him. She stood up to escort him to the door out of the office, frowning to herself.

Medwyn bent double before they’d gone far, coughing so hard that Minerva cast a diagnostic spell without thought. If he had some kind of disease, she wanted to know so that she might prevent it from spreading to the students.

But the charm didn’t show the congestion in the lungs or chest that Minerva had expected from the sounds he was making. Instead, it made shiny strands of light appear, wrapping his back and hands like an insect’s carapace. Minerva stared.

“What did you do to me?” Medwyn was backing away from her, his eyes narrowed and his hands raised defensively. He dug in his pocket for his wand.

“A diagnostic charm. I thought you were sick.”

“I’m not!” Medwyn flicked his wand, and the gleaming blue-black strands disappeared. “And I’ll thank you to _not_ try anything like that on me in the future.” He gave her a sharp glance and disappeared down the stairs.

Minerva sent Malkin to escort the man, just so he wouldn’t “accidentally” wander into a place he wasn’t supposed to be, and then turned towards the corner where Songleaper had concealed himself. The jackrabbit leaped out and stared at her desperately.

“That has something to do with why you’re so desperate to leave him, doesn’t it? But nothing to do with exam results?”

Songleaper bobbed his head, then shook it. Minerva felt her eyes narrow. “It has to do with both?”

Songleaper sat up and stamped down with one of his hind feet. Minerva looked at him thoughtfully. That was the most animated he had been since she had met him, and Harry and Severus had described him as quiet and docile.

“Is there any way that you can tell me what has happened?” she asked quietly. “Or perhaps I can begin to guess?’

Songleaper hesitated only once, long enough to make Minerva think he was going to retreat back into the corner where he had hidden, but then he sat up with his paws clasped in front of him and looked at her intently. Minerva asked, “Does it have to do with the Forbidden Arts?”

His ears flopped fiercely as he nodded again. Minerva winced. “Why—no, that’s no good, not if I can only ask you yes or no questions. All right. Would I find an answer to what kind of Forbidden Arts your wizard performed in books?”

Songleaper turned and jumped onto her desk. For a moment, as he hurried across towards the shelves, Minerva thought he might actually point out of one of Albus’s books, and held her breath. But instead, he halted and stomped his foot down again.

On top of the ledger full of Albus’s notes that she had shown to Medwyn.

Minerva stared at it, then back at Songleaper. “But I’ve been all through there,” she said, feeling stupid and annoyed at the same time. The door opened behind her and Malkin strolled through, and Minerva reached down to stroke his fur. “There’s no mention of the Forbidden Arts, except that sometimes Albus thought someone was using them. There’s no mention of that with Medwyn.”

Songleaper turned around and stomped on the ledger again and again. Minerva shook her head. “I’ll read it, but there’s no mention of any reaction to the diagnostic charm like your wizard had, either.”

Songleaper seemed to think he had done all that was necessary. He leaped off the desk and into a corner, where he started to groom his ears.

Malkin gave a light growl. Yesterday, that would still have intimidated Songleaper, who was, after all, a prey animal. Now he twitched his whiskers forwards and looked as if he would like to come out of the corner and kick Malkin.

“Peace,” Minerva said sharply, feeling oddly as if she was mediating between Gryffindor students.

Songleaper went back to combing his ears. Malkin chose to turn and groom one of his hind legs in response, as if to demonstrate his complete superiority to a mere tin jackrabbit.

Minerva spent the next ten minutes rattling the ledger Albus had left, turning it around, casting spells on it, prying under the pages, and otherwise trying to make sure that she hadn’t missed something that Albus had left hidden in the book. But in the end, she had to sit down in front of her desk and admit the far more likely possibility that Songleaper was saying the notes Albus had left behind were similar in some ways to the spells that Medwyn must have performed.

She couldn’t see how.

 _I need a new perspective,_ Minerva decided, and began to write down things that she wanted Severus, Quirinus, and—perhaps—Amelia Bones to look into.


	7. A Taste of Justice

“He says he doesn’t know.”

“Well, I mean, he used to teach Muggle Studies. Why would he know? You should ask Professor Snape. He would keep it to himself, anyway.”

“I don’t like the tone in your voice when you say _Muggle,_ Malfoy.”

Harry rolled his eyes at his two arguing friends, and didn’t even try to hide it. They were being silly. He had been right to ask Professor Quirrell about a spell that would make someone’s skin turn blue-black, he thought, because Professor McGonagall had told Harry about it. And the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor should know about something like that if anyone would.

“It’s a good suggestion to ask Professor Snape about it,” he said. “And I’m sure Draco didn’t mean anything bad when he said Muggle, Hermione. He just meant that Professor Quirrell might not know anything because he’s only taught Defense for a few months.”

Hermione and Draco glared at each other for a few seconds more, and then sniffed and seemed to decide to ignore each other. Hermione petted Regina while Draco reached up to smooth down Kali’s wings. Harry was glad. She’d looked like she was going to fly across the table and attack Hermione.

“Can you trust Professor Snape, though, mate?” Ron asked. He was feeding Arctos some scraps that he’d brought from lunch and sneaked into the library even though Madam Pince tried to keep food out. Arctos was eating them fast enough that Harry didn’t think she’d notice. “I mean, I know he swore to you, but—”

“Swearing is a good sign,” Cormac interrupted. “It’s the _best_ sign. Someone who swears an oath knows they can be punished by the magic if they break it, so they’re going to be loyal.”

“It’s the best sign,” Neville said quietly. “Cormac’s right.”

Ron huffed and crossed his arms. “I just want to be sure that you can trust him, that’s all.” Arctos nudged him and whined, and Ron started giving the little gifts to his familiar again, although his eyes were on Harry’s face.

“We have to know what that blue-black stuff means,” Harry said. He was sure of it, that it wouldn’t be better, the way Hermione had suggested, just to keep it to themselves for now. He stroked Golden’s head as he lifted his nose above the table to look all of them in the face. “I think it’s important.”

“At least Professor Quirrell and Professor Snape both know everything else,” Draco said soothingly. “So I’m sure that it won’t matter that we’ve asked both of them. They aren’t going to spread it around.”

“Maybe Professor McGonagall discussed it with him already, though,” Hermione interrupted. “What would happen if he doesn’t have an answer, either?”

“Then we’ll research it ourselves.” Harry turned and looked at her. “Are you all right, Hermione?” She seemed almost scared, but he knew she wasn’t afraid that Professor Snape was evil, the way Ron was.

Hermione sat there and said nothing for a few seconds. Regina was nuzzling the side of her neck, though, so Harry knew that he hadn’t imagined that she was uncomfortable.

Hermione finally took a deep breath and said, “I’ve been reading a little about corrupting familiars.” Even though they were already behind privacy spells that Cedric had put up for them, she lowered her voice. Cormac nodded in approval. “It’s—awful. I just don’t think that we can do anything about it if the Medwyns are really doing that. A group of kids can’t do _everything_.”

Harry nodded thoughtfully. She was right. And even though he could do more than almost any of them because he had a golden familiar and people were stupid enough to think that was special, they needed more allies. “Well, there’s some people who will help us that are adults. Like Madam Bones in the Ministry. We just need to talk to her and see if she’ll help us even more than she has. And your parents, right, Ron?”

“I mean, they would,” Ron said slowly. He had stopped feeding Arctos again. The wolf nudged him, and Ron jumped and started dropping more scraps. “But they only have bronze familiars, and I think the last time we had someone with a silver familiar in the family was a couple generations ago.”

“So?” Harry asked, not seeing what was wrong with that.

“Not many people are going to listen to us. Not like they will to Draco’s parents, since they both have silvers.”

“And influence with the Wizengamot and the Ministry.” Cormac nodded to them. “That might be even more important.”

“My parents are going to be—difficult.” Draco ruffled one of the edges of Kali’s wings, stretching it out and paying a huge amount of attention to it. “They don’t want to change things that benefit them.”

“Like the hierarchy,” Harry muttered. Well, he had already known about the obstacle that Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy would present. That wasn’t anything new.

“Yes.”

Harry nodded. “Well, we’ll still do what we can. And I know that some of Cormac’s relatives in the Ministry will help, and Julian. And what about your parents, Cedric?” He turned towards Cedric, who was their oldest group member and who had been listening and silent while they talked.

Cedric glanced around as though to make sure that no one was pressed up against the edges of his privacy charm. Then he took a deep breath. “My father is a good person, and he has a copper seahorse.”

“That sounds like a _but_ coming to me.”

Susan hadn’t spoken much, either. Cedric gave her a sad smile. “Yeah. My father believes very much in a place for everybody and everybody in their place. He was pretty horrified when they arrested Professor Dumbledore, because even if he has done bad things, he was still at the top of the hierarchy. He was supposed to be someone you just listened to, not arrested. My father is still complaining about it.”

Harry drummed his fingers on the table. “See, this is why things need to change. Dumbledore wouldn’t have been arrested at all if no one had gone around questioning the hierarchy and just assumed he had to be a good person because he has Fawkes.”

“We know, Harry.” Susan’s smile was about as sad as Cedric’s. “And you know that my aunt and I are on your side. But it just _is_ going to take some time.”

Harry nodded. “What if—well, first I have to talk to Professor Snape about the blue-black thing that showed up on that one person Professor McGonagall used the diagnostic spell on. And then I have to speak to the familiar who approached me in secret.” He hadn’t told anyone but Neville and Draco about Curtis yet, Neville because he was Harry’s foster brother and Draco because he had seen Medwyn come up to try and talk to Harry.

“I wish everything didn’t have to be so secret.” Hermione looked like she was fretting. “I wish we could do everything out in the open.”

Harry nodded. “But we can’t.” He stood up. “Thanks for talking to me, you lot. I’ll go talk to Professor Snape and let you know what he says.”

“I think I’ll stay here in the library and research for a while.” Hermione stood up and walked into the aisles of books with a determined expression.

Cedric took the privacy charm down, and he, Neville, Susan, and Harry all walked back towards the dungeons with Draco in tow. Ron and Cormac went back to Gryffindor Tower. Harry was frowning, and he couldn’t help it even when Ron made a joke to try and cheer him up.

The Medwyns were doing _something_ that was driving their familiars away from them or making it hard for them to stay loyal to their wizards. Songleaper had actually left. What in the world could be more important than the bonds they had with their familiars? What would be worth more than that to them?

*

Draco shivered uncertainly as he looked at his father’s face in the flames. Technically, none of the Slytherin students were supposed to be able to Floo their families from the common room, but Draco was a Malfoy and had a silver familiar. Even the seventh-years often deferred to him unless they had silvers themselves. And none of the ones who did were in the common room at the moment.

“What do you want with Harry, though, Father?” he asked. Father had just told him that he wanted the best for Harry. But Draco was learning to look underneath things. He thought that sounded sort of…ominous.

Kali shifted on his shoulder and rubbed her chin against his cheek. Draco scratched her back, but didn’t look away from his father.

Father sighed patiently. “You are worrying far too much, Draco. I mean exactly what I said. Does Harry understand everything about our world?”

“Well, of course not, sir. He was raised by Muggles.”

Father nodded. “Muggles who told him nothing about magic and nothing about how extraordinary he was. Nonetheless, he managed to acquire a golden familiar and come into our world with a position of high prestige. But with the prestige comes vulnerability. There are those who will take advantage of his innocence. Your mother and I want to safeguard him from that.”

Draco swallowed. It was strange knowing that, a few months ago, he would have believed whatever Father said. Father didn’t lie. He didn’t need to. He had too much power. He stood at the top of the hierarchy.

But now, Draco just…found himself doubting.

“My son?”

Draco called himself back to the conversation with a snap. If his father really _was_ doing something that might hurt Harry, Draco couldn’t betray him. “I—just want to be sure that Harry doesn’t get hurt,” he whispered. Kali hooked her claws in the front of his robes and nuzzled him more insistently. Draco stroked her. “Like you said, anyone could take advantage of him.”

“ _I_ am not going to do so, Draco.”

Draco watched Hecate, his father’s wyvern, put her head in the flames. It was all he could see of her since she was so huge. “All right, Father.”

“I do want you to tell me a little more about where Harry goes and who he talks to, besides you,” Father continued casually. “Because, of course, he might get influenced by other people raised by Muggles. They might even agree with him that the punishment given to his Muggle relatives was too harsh.”

Draco blinked. “But the Dursleys are being punished now, Father, so what does it matter?”

“It matters because the next time that abusive Muggles have to be brought to trial—” Father shook his head. “What happens if Harry pleads for them, as well? What happens if people start to lose respect for him because they see that he stands always for mercy, and never for justice?”

Draco hesitated again. Sometimes he thought he just didn’t know enough to argue with his father, even though Harry and his other friends made him kind of want to. “I think Harry does stand for justice, Father. I know he wants justice for people who don’t have silver or gold familiars—”

“That only proves how little he knows.” Father had misty eyes, something Draco had almost never seen before. “Draco, _think_ about it. How do you think the hierarchy was first decided on?”

“On the basis of magical power?”

Father nodded at once. “Yes. And those who have more power than others are the ones who need to safeguard the lower orders. That is one thing your mother and I will try to teach Harry to do.”

“I mean, I think Harry does want to do that?” Draco was still trying to feel his way through this strange new world. “He just doesn’t think of them as lower orders.”

Father paused. “What do you think would happen if all people were equal, Draco?”

“Do you mean equally powerful, Father?”

“No. I mean treated identically and given the same kind of power that we hold because we are at the top of the hierarchy. Do you think that we would manage to have a coherent society, Draco? Even your friend Harry relies on his difference from others and the power of his golden familiar to make others do what he wishes.”

Draco hesitated and then nodded, because that was true. But he felt as though there was something wrong with the argument his father was giving him. Even though it seemed to be truer the more he thought about it.

“What if we could have a different society with people not scorned because of the color of their familiars, though?” he asked. “They could have more power, but not everyone would be running around and doing the same thing? Could there just be, I don’t know, more _room_ for people with copper and tin familiars?”

Father gave him a long, long look. Then he said, “I will leave you to think about what you mean, Draco, and tell me when you could explain in detail what such a society would _look_ like.”

And the fire snuffed out, and left Draco and Kali sitting there. Draco felt embarrassment squirming in his stomach. Things had gone wrong, and he wasn’t even sure how. He felt like a bad son, and a bad person to be making arguments for Harry’s side at the same time.

“I don’t know what else to say,” Draco whispered to Kali, reaching up to scratch her scales. “There have to be words that make Father see what Harry means, right? Without hurting either one of them.”

Kali nudged his cheek and then flew away towards the bedrooms. Draco sighed and followed her. He supposed that was sort of an answer, at least as to what Kali thought of it.

*

“I do not like how his influence over the boy is proceeding, Narcissa. I thought it would be easy for Draco to become a leader, given that Potter barely wants to use his power, but this was _not_ leadership.”

Narcissa nodded in silence, one hand in Venus’s fur as her familiar sprawled beside her. Hecate was out flying over the house at the moment, echoing Lucius’s frustration as he paced in front of the couch. Narcissa knew why Lucius and Hecate needed space from each other in these moods, but it still made her curl her lip a little.

“Well? Aren’t _you_ worried over the fact that our son might become more loyal to Harry Potter than his family, Narcissa?”

Narcissa sighed and stood, walking over to stop Lucius in place with a hand on his chest. She kissed his cheek and murmured, “No. This is the first close friendship Draco has had, Lucius. Allow him to enjoy it.”

“You were the one who was worried that he would chain Draco to him when we first found out that he had a golden familiar.”

Narcissa gave him a thin smile and stepped back. “I can change my mind, Lucius. Be easy. It won’t happen.”

She left her husband frowning after her and walked towards the owlery at the top of the house, with Venus pacing beside her. Then she sent off the letter she had prepared, and shook her head a little as she watched the owl vanish.

Lucius didn’t need to worry that Draco would become too attached to Harry Potter and betray his family, but that was because _she_ would handle it. Lucius was the wrong person to do so. He might even have put Potter on his guard by his clumsy interference with Draco.

Narcissa turned away, shaking her head. Lucius might disdain allies from the bottom of the hierarchy, but Narcissa had never seen the point of it. Those were the ones who had the most collective resentment, and the ones who would jump at the chance to get “justice,” as they perceived it.

Why not use them? They were there as tools for the hands of those born to the silver and the gold.

_Well, at least those born to the silver and the gold who know how to behave.  
_


	8. A Taste of Truth

She closed her eyes and ran her hand over the parchment in front of her. It crinkled, and she shivered. On the one hand, this was a taste of the revenge that she had promised herself she would have someday. On all of them.

On the other hand, it was a betrayal that her husband would never forgive her for.

She breathed out and opened her eyes again. He would only hold it against her if he found out. And if she was careful and her ally was careful, there was no reason that he need ever find out.

Carefully, she made sure the door was locked, and then reached out for the ink and parchment she would need to compose an answer.

*

Minerva licked her lips. The parchments in front of her were Ministry records, and she felt as terrible prying into them as she did reading the notes in Albus’s ledgers in the first place. What she suspected _couldn’t_ be true.

But she had to have the records to decide if she’d made a mistake, or if there actually was something off in the ledgers as opposed to the birth certificates from the Ministry, which were always updated when a child’s familiar manifested to add in the color, species, and gender. Names were something chosen by the child at a later date, and were rarely written in.

Certificates for Squibs, who could neither manifest a familiar nor see one, were stamped with a large silver S. Minerva fanned through the copies she had and laid all of those aside. Then she pulled Albus’s ledger over to her across the desk.

She paged through until she reached the entry for 1981’s entering class, smaller than most of them since so many parents had been keeping their children at home by then or sending them out of the country for fear of the war. Minerva ran her fingers down the entries until she reached the one she was sure she had seen.

 _Claire Jordan, first-year Hufflepuff, tin female horse named Silver’s Whisper_.

Minerva reached into the Ministry papers without taking her eyes from Albus’s crabbed handwriting. Then she looked over and searched until she found the birth certificate that sat there and stared at her, defying the evidence of her eyes and the note Albus had made more than ten years before.

_Claire Jordan. Mother: Karen Jordan née Medwyn, bronze witch. Father: Marcus Jordan, copper wizard._

_SQUIB._

Minerva sat back in the chair and stared dully at the entry in Albus’s ledger and then the birth certificate copy again. One of them had to be wrong. She had no way of determining which it was unless she actually tracked down Claire Jordan. That the woman—as she would be now—had a mother who had come from the Medwyn family made Minerva achingly suspicious.

She remembered Jordan, vaguely. A shy girl who had never shown any particular talent for Transfiguration and dropped it gratefully after getting a Poor on it in her OWLS exams. She had indeed had a tin mare who followed her faithfully, and Pomona had sometimes murmured fretfully that she wished Jordan had named her familiar something other than Silver’s Whisper, keeping alive a hope she could never have.

Minerva had never heard of a child manifesting a familiar later than eighteen months. On the other hand, she also hadn’t heard of the Ministry making such a huge mistake that they would record someone born a witch as a Squib.

Minerva didn’t know what had happened, what the disparate records proved. She only knew that there was a sour taste in the back of her throat, and it probably wouldn’t go away even after she had spoken to Jordan.

And she would have to be careful about approaching her, for that matter. No doubt her Medwyn relative, Songleaper’s wizard, would have warned her about what had happened when Minerva cast the diagnostic charm on him.

Minerva sighed. Why was it that every new piece of information she discovered seemed to open a chasm under her feet?

*

“I just want to help, Harry.”

Harry stopped and turned around. He was going to speak to Professor Snape in the dungeons, but Cedric had followed him all the way, and now he stood there and stared earnestly at Harry. He was kind of like Neville that way, although Harry never mentioned it because poor Neville would never believe it. He still didn’t have that much confidence in himself.

“I know, Cedric. But I have to speak to Professor Snape by myself.”

“What if one of the prefects stops you because you’re out past curfew, though? At least let me wait for you and come out before curfew so I can make sure that you get to the common room safely.”

Harry didn’t roll his eyes. Cedric was trying to be nice. “But if you’re out after curfew, the prefects will get you in trouble, too.”

“Not if it’s a girl, and half of them are, you know. I just have to grin like this, and they melt all over me.” Cedric abruptly grinned. Nebulous, his familiar, took a little step away from him as if to say that _he_ didn’t approve of smiling like that.

Harry laughed, and Cedric smiled more normally. “That’s better. You’ve been upset for the past week. Did you learn something else? Something about familiars or—” He lowered his voice. “The Forbidden Arts?”

Harry shook his head. He didn’t _want_ to know about them, or at least he didn’t want to know about them unless he could use that knowledge to help someone else. “I just got a message from Professor Snape that he did learn something, though, and that’s why he wants me to come and talk to him.”

“But you talk to him all the time, and you don’t brood like that.”

Harry hesitated and patted Golden on the head. Golden was looking back and forth between them, and Harry knew he wanted to go on and find Professor Snape. “I started having a thought. But it was—stupid. It can’t be what’s really going on with those people and their familiars.”

“Why not, though?”

“Because I dreamed about it.” Harry braced himself. He knew that dreams didn’t mean anything. The Dursleys said that all the time, and even Hermione had said it when he mentioned something about his dreams to her.

Cedric just looked at him seriously. “Well, why not? Some people have prophetic dreams, you know. Seers. And my mother said once that wizards with golden familiars have the ability to tap into all kinds of magic, even the ones that they wouldn’t have a hereditary talent for.”

Harry blinked. “I didn’t know that.” He touched Golden on the head again, and thought about the way that he had sometimes dreamed the exact moment when the Dursleys were going to let him out of the cupboard, or the exact time when Golden would do something with their magic. It never helped him prevent anything, though. He wasn’t used to thinking of his dreams as helpful.

“Well, anyway, I’m going to wait right here for you,” Cedric said, once he seemed to realize that Harry wasn’t going to tell him about his dreams.

Harry nodded to him and slipped down the corridor so he could knock on Professor Snape’s door. It opened, and Harry went in with Golden behind him. Cedric was standing there like a guard, with Nebulous next to him.

It made Harry a little sad.

Professor Snape was standing with his hands folded behind his back, studying Harry narrowly as he and Golden came inside. Shadowstriker was coiled next to him, rearing up so straight that Harry was sure he was doing his best to imitate his wizard. “You were not followed?” the professor asked quietly.

“Cedric came with me, but he’s just waiting outside, Professor. He’s going to escort me back to the common room when we’re done talking. He thinks that I might be in danger or something.”

Professor Snape didn’t look as though he thought Cedric was ridiculous. Harry was a little surprised, but he remained still, watching Snape and Shadowstriker, who was starting to sway side to side now. Harry thought it was a little silly when he wasn’t even a cobra.

“Minerva—that is to say, Headmistress McGonagall discovered something she thinks is significant.” Snape was breathing as though he thought he might scare Harry. “She looked up the name of a girl whom Albus listed in 1981 as having a tin horse familiar.”

“Okay, sir,” Harry said slowly. He wondered where this was going. He thought Professor Snape understood now that even people with tin familiars deserved respect.

“But she also obtained birth certificates from the Ministry, including the record of that girl’s birth. She was declared a Squib.”

Harry blinked. “And they couldn’t be mistaken, sir? Maybe someone never went back and updated her record after the arrival of her familiar.”

“No.” Professor Snape was staring intently at him now. “Birth certificates are updated two times in a child’s life, Harry—when they are first born and the names and ranks of their parents are recorded along with their own name, gender, and place of birth, and again at eighteen months, when their familiar has manifested. Or not manifested, in the case of Squibs.”

Harry tilted his head. “I can think of some people’s birth certificates who wouldn’t be updated then, sir.”

“Who?”

“People like me. People who grew up in the Muggle world. They wouldn’t have wizarding birth certificates, and they wouldn’t have much to put on them even if they did, since they couldn’t record the ranks of their parents. Unless they talk about Muggle parents, Professor Snape?” For all Harry knew, they did. It wasn’t like he’d ever seen a Ministry birth certificate.

Professor Snape swallowed. “I—that is a good point, Harry. I know that no one updated yours, or the rumor of you having a golden familiar would have spread through our people long before your eleventh birthday.”

Harry nodded. “I just think that maybe this isn’t sinister, sir. Maybe it’s a mistake.” But he could feel dread in his stomach, and Golden had moved up to gently nudge his snout against Harry’s hand.

Harry looked down at Golden. Golden gazed solemnly back at him, and then turned to Professor Snape.

Professor Snape closed his eyes. “That is the reason I asked you to come here this evening, Harry. I thought it might be something familiars would have seen happening in the past. And you are one of the few wizards that familiars will willingly speak with.”

“Only because other people aren’t paying attention,” Harry muttered, but he obediently crouched down in front of Golden. “ _Is something wrong?”_ he asked in Parseltongue. “ _Do you know what it means if someone is listed as a Squib and then gets listed as a witch or wizard_?”

Golden leaned forwards and rested his snout in Harry’s hands. He was shivering. Harry gaped at him. He’d never seen Golden ask for comfort the way he was doing right now. It was—he was always the one who was slithering around offering comfort in Harry’s memories, and standing up to the Dursleys even if they couldn’t see him.

 _But does that mean he can’t ask?_ Harry cupped his hands around his anaconda’s neck, and said, still in Parseltongue, “ _You can tell me. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to do something about it right away, but you can tell me._ ”

Golden looked up at him, eyes brilliant gems in his face. “ _This is the reason that I chose you when you were a newborn,”_ he whispered. “ _I knew that you would be able to bear the rigors of such a life._ ”

Harry didn’t ask what kind of life he meant, even though he wanted to. He knew that too many questions right now might make Golden back away from telling him the truth. He nodded. “ _What is it?”_

“ _There are familiars who do not resonate with my magic as they should. I can reach out to true beings of my kind, and speak to them, and know them. Sometimes I have met them before in other lives._ ”

“ _But—these are familiars you haven’t met before_?”

“ _Not that. There are so many of us, and we have limited lives in limited corners of the earth. It would be ridiculous to think I had met everybody before. But they can’t reply to me. They can’t speak to me. Their magic doesn’t feel like magic, and they don’t feel bonded to a wizard. They don’t feel like they have a_ soul.”

Harry went cold. He glanced over his shoulder at Professor Snape, but even though Shadowstriker was hiding behind him now, he didn’t look like he understood the conversation. “ _Isn’t that just—familiars like Nagini? The ones who get corrupted by their wizards_?”

Golden slowly shook his head. “ _She is corrupt in a different way—damaged, but she still has a soul and could answer me. There are familiars in this castle who can’t respond to me, who seem to have no soul. Only a few, but they exist._ ” He paused as if bracing himself for something, although Harry didn’t see what could be more shocking. “ _And one familiar that is no longer here._ ”

“ _Who_?”

“ _Fawkes. Dumbledore’s phoenix._ ”

Harry didn’t know how long he knelt there, just staring at Golden, before he felt Professor Snape’s hand on his shoulder and the lip of a potions vial pressed against his mouth. “You will drink this, Harry,” Professor Snape said, his voice soft and commanding.

Harry swallowed automatically. He felt the silky-smooth feel of a Calming Draught slipping down his throat before he tasted it. But he still stood up shakily, and Professor Snape had to help him to a chair. Shadowstriker came with them and coiled around Harry’s left leg. Golden was already wrapped around Harry’s right leg. That was one reason he had trouble walking.

Then Harry thought about what Golden had said, and shuddered. Golden was just _one_ of the reasons that he’d had trouble walking.

“Tell me what happened.” Professor Snape’s voice was soft and commanding.

Harry met his eyes and held his gaze. “Golden can tell the difference between different types of familiars, sir. He said that some of them feel corrupted in different ways. Some of them are like Voldemort’s snake, but they can still answer him. They just don’t agree with him. And then some of them don’t feel like they have a soul at all.”

Professor Snape closed his eyes. “And you think that he was talking about familiars like the ones that some former Squibs might have.”

“Yes, sir. But he also said he was talking about Dumbledore’s phoenix.”

The professor snapped his eyes open at once. His face was furious. Harry found himself flinching before he thought about it. The professor immediately reached out towards him and spoke in a soft voice. “You don’t ever have to be afraid of me, Harry.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Harry breathed out. It had just been a reaction. The Dursleys would have been upset if he told them something like that about a teacher or any other adult. But Professor Snape would help him handle it. “What are we going to do?”

Professor Snape’s voice was soft and hoarse. “Right now? I don’t know.”


	9. Misplaced

“Thank you agreeing to speak with me, Ms. Jordan.” Minerva made sure to keep her voice soft and professional as she glanced through the parchments in front of her. In fact, many of them had been arranged only as cover for her interview. She wanted to try and pretend this wasn’t something on which several important decisions could ride.

“If you’d state your business and make it so that we can get on with it, Headmistress? Reporters have deadlines, you know.”

Minerva glanced up and nodded. Claire Jordan sat near the edge of the chair in front of Minerva’s desk, although not in a way that would make Minerva think she suspected the truth and wanted to leave. Her mare stood at her shoulder. Tin, yes, despite her name.

And now that Minerva was looking, or rather watching the way that Malkin was staring fixedly at Silver’s Whisper, she could see ways in which the mare was different from ordinary familiars. She barely moved. Her tail swished only now and then. Her eyes blinked sometimes, but didn’t have the lustrous depth that Minerva associated with horses.

“Headmistress?”

“There are concerns, based on some of the papers that he left behind, that Hogwarts’s former Headmaster did not behave appropriately with students,” Minerva said, and left the words to lie in the middle of the floor to see how Jordan would respond to them.

Jordan’s eyes widened before she laughed. “Are you trying to ask if he made any sexual advances towards me, Headmistress?”

“Well, yes. I suppose I am. I didn’t know for sure if that was what had happened based on the notes he left, which were rather obscure, but...”

Jordan shook her head, her dark hair bouncing around her face, her smile supremely confident. “The Headmaster only spoke with me privately two times, once to welcome me to the school shortly after I was first Sorted, and then once when I’d got in a fight with two of my Housemates that was so bad there was talk of my expulsion. He certainly never made an _advance_ to me. Besides, wasn’t he gay? I’m sure I heard that rumor.”

“His former relationship was part of the gossip,” Minerva agreed, which was as much as she was willing to get into it with someone who might be an enemy in ways she didn’t understand yet. “But can you describe the meeting he had with you after you were Sorted? Some of his alarming notes came from those meetings.”

In seconds, Jordan’s shoulders were tight and rising, and Silver’s Whisper nosed forwards until her head was practically draped over one of those shoulders. Jordan gave Minerva a single, wild-eyed glance, then managed to bite her lip and glance down. “I don’t want to discuss that meeting.”

“Ms. Jordan, please. I know that it might hold very painful memories for you, but—”

“He did _nothing_ to me. I want to leave now.” Jordan stood up, her robes swishing around her.

“It was more based on what he might have said. That’s what I was trying to figure out from the notes, if he said something that made students feel less welcome at Hogwarts.”

“Your investigative techniques need work,” was all Jordan said, her face blank and hostile, and she walked over to the door and let herself out. Her familiar moved behind her, legs almost mechanical. Minerva knew that wasn’t usual, either. She would have expected at least a backwards look from a familiar whose wizard she’d irritated.

She turned to Malkin. Malkin immediately walked over to the ledger that was part of the notes Minerva had left out, and which she had intended to read from if Jordan had been more cooperative, and pawed at it.

“What is it?” Minerva tilted it open and let the pages fall past until Malkin’s paw slammed down again. Yes, there it was, the page that described Albus’s meeting with Claire Jordan. Minerva studied it again.

Nothing that she hadn’t already seen, though. The description, the notes on Jordan’s House placement and familiar. If she hadn’t seen the birth certificate that declared Jordan a Squib, she wouldn’t have thought anything was out of place at all.

Malkin tapped insistently near the bottom of the page. Minerva looks at it and frowned. “What? The only thing there is Albus’s signature.” It had become more and more flowing over the years, although so covered with flourishes that Minerva personally found it difficult to make out each individual letter.

Minerva peered again at the signature. Now that Malkin pointed it out, there seemed to be an extra A at the beginning, as if Albus had started to sign his name in one place, then changed his mind and started over again elsewhere.

Curious now, Minerva glanced at Malkin and his switching tail. “Have you seen that in other places?”

Malkin promptly yowled, and Minerva turned the pages until she reached another person whom Albus had identified as having a familiar and whose birth certificate listed them as a Squib. Yes, the A was there, too. And on the pages of a few people whose familiars Albus had listed as “unnatural,” but not on all of them.

“Great. Another mystery,” Minerva told Malkin. But Malkin, looking as smug as though he had just solved one, curled up and went to sleep on top of most of the papers on the desk. Minerva said. She supposed it was fair that he leave his human to figure out what was going on this time, when he’d already helped.

*

“I wish you would be more careful, Mr. Potter.”

Harry glanced up with a blink. He’d been packing up his books to leave Defense, and Golden had Harry’s bag looped around his neck, wanting to carry it, the way he sometimes did. “Why? Has something happened, Professor?”

Professor Quirrell sighed. He was petting Alanna, the way he usually was. Then again, Harry thought it was probably pretty weird to have your familiar possessed at the same time you were possessed yourself, and so you’d want to touch them all the time. “Come with me, Mr. Potter.”

Harry put the last books in the bag Golden was holding, curious now, and went across the corridor with Professor Quirrell. They were in a small room that looked as if it had once held storage, but it was empty now. Professor Quirrell cleared away the dust with a sweep of his wand and then touched his wand to the enormous crystal globe sitting on the table in the center of the room.

It began to glow and spin. Harry laughed in surprise. Professor Quirrell blinked at him.

“It looks like a Muggle disco ball, Professor.”

Maybe some people wouldn’t have known what Harry was talking about, but Professor Quirrell used to teach Muggle Studies, he knew. He smiled thinly. “Yes, I understand. But I need you to watch the memory that it captured from last week, Mr. Potter.”

Harry obediently leaned in. He saw a corridor that he’d thought was empty. He was meeting with Curtis, the bronze peacock who was Wychard Medwyn’s familiar. It was last week, just like Professor Quirrell said. Then again, Harry had known that.

“What did you want me to look at, sir?”

“Watch and learn.”

Harry obediently turned back to the globe, just as Curtis got nervous and ran away again. Harry sighed a little. Curtis had tried to tell them some more about the “vessels” that the Medwyn family wanted to use their familiars for, or make them into, or whatever was really going on, but he had still been scattered. And Golden said he didn’t want to betray his wizard.

But just as Curtis fluttered away, someone moved in the memory near a doorway. Harry leaned in and squinted. Yes, it was Medwyn there, Curtis’s wizard. And he looked so upset that Harry was actually surprised he hadn’t come out right then and confronted Harry and Curtis and Golden.

Instead, he turned and stormed away. Harry shook his head. That meant there was a Medwyn who knew about them. That could be bad.

Professor Quirrell ended the memories that were dancing in the disco ball. Harry looked up. Professor Quirrell was grim, and Alanna was sitting on his shoulder and watching them with such twitchy ears that Harry thought she resembled Curtis. “What are you going to do now?” Professor Quirrell asked.

“I suppose that we’ll talk to Professor Snape about this. And probably the Headmistress. I can’t really do anything else until Medwyn comes and talks to me, sir.”

Professor Quirrell tensed. “You seem very calm about this.”

“I mean, I wish he hadn’t found out, and I don’t want him to mistreat Curtis. But you think—you think something else is going to happen, sir?”

“I was anticipating an attack on you.”

Harry looked at Professor Quirrell thoughtfully. “I understand, sir. But I don’t think Medwyn is really like that. He’ll probably either yell at me, or he’ll stay in the background and write to relatives of his. It could be worse if he does that, because I think he has relatives in the Ministry who could make trouble. But I’ll have Golden with me, you know. And we can probably deflect most attacks.”

“You should not be so calm. You should realize that you are attempting to upset the hierarchy, and there are people who take that _very_ seriously.”

“I mean, I know, sir?” Harry was a little puzzled, not sure what Professor Quirrell wanted him to say. “But I can only keep on going. And someone was going to find out what I was doing at some point.”

“You should _stop_.”

“Stop what, sir?”

“Getting in the way. Upsetting the hierarchy.”

Harry tilted his head a little. “I don’t think I can do that, sir. Not when there are familiars who are being ignored and mistreated and made into vessels of some kind, and not when there are people with tin and copper familiars who are treated the same way. And not when people want to kneel to me as a lord.”

“What does that last have to do with it?”

“Because there are people who would always treat me like I mattered more than they did. And that’s not true. So I have to make it stop being true.”

Professor Quirrell closed his eyes for a second, and his hand tightened on Alanna until she squirmed uncomfortably. Then he released her and said, “But it makes it sound as if you will go against the stated wishes of people who make up the hierarchy to do so.”

“Some of them, yes, sir,” Harry agreed, thinking of the Malfoys. Well, not Draco, who was great if uncomfortable around Hermione sometimes, but Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy. “But they’re already going against the stated wishes of a lot of people, like the ones with tin and copper familiars. So I have to accept that.”

“Accept what?”

“That a lot of people are going to be upset with me.”

Professor Quirrell bowed his head. “You saved my life and sanity,” he said, his words blurring the way Dudley’s sometimes did when he got really upset. Harry wished he could do something, but he didn’t think he could. “I would not see any harm come to you.”

“I wasn’t the only one who was there for the ritual, though,” Harry told him. He really wanted Professor Quirrell to remember that. Sometimes he thought Voldemort had managed to get control of Professor Quirrell because he was so lonely and didn’t have lots of friends. “So please remember that you have other people who can help you.”

“I can’t convince you to turn your back on this.”

“You mean to stop trying to figure out what people are using their familiars for? No, sir. Sorry.”

Professor Quirrell lifted his head. “I didn’t really think I could,” he admitted, and next to him, Alanna shivered in what looked like relief. “So the important thing will be to make sure that you’re protected as you intervene in the hierarchy.”

“How are you going to do that, though, sir? I mean, it’s dangerous enough for us to be fighting the hierarchy in the first place.”

“I—have some memories from my possession.” Professor Quirrell shuddered a little. “The Forbidden Arts that Voldemort studied, but also some magic he studied that’s not illegal or immoral, just little-known. I’d like to start teaching that to you. You have the power necessary to use it. You should be able to defend yourself.”

Harry found his face softening. “You don’t have to do that, Professor Quirrell. I mean, if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“No. I can hardly let you face this alone. And you’re a golden wizard who barely has any idea of what he can do.” Professor Quirrell ignored the way that Golden straightened his neck and looked very offended. “I want to do what I can to help.”

“All right,” Harry said. “So in the meantime, do you know anything about the Medwyn family? Or what it would mean for someone to turn a familiar into a vessel?”

Professor Quirrell licked his lips. “Not directly. I’ll have to study a little and get back to you. But in the meantime, I want to show you how to take a mobile Shield Charm with you.”

“Isn’t the Shield Charm a fifth-year spell, sir?”

“It can be learned by lower years in extreme circumstances. And I think yours qualifies.”

Harry nodded, feeling a little impressed and a little depressed. Professor Quirrell really did think people were going to attack him just because he wanted some things to change. The silver witches and wizards didn’t even have to lose very much! They just had to think and talk and listen!

But some people, Harry knew from just knowing the Dursleys, hated to do that. So he supposed it made sense that he would have to learn magic to defend himself until they would instead.


	10. Written Magic

Harry frowned a little as he read the letter from Julian. It said that the Wizengamot had debated the punishment of the Dursleys for several days last week. They didn’t think it harsh enough, they wanted to change it, but they couldn’t muster the votes to do so. Julian seemed to think that meant Harry’s relatives would somehow get free and he would have to go back to them.

“Is something wrong?”

Harry glanced up at Neville with a smile. “Just potentially bad news from one of our allies.”

Neville frowned. “Wh-what potentially bad news?” Trevor croaked and hopped on his shoulder. Neville picked him up and put him in the middle of the table so he could gnaw on lettuce. Harry couldn’t help but smile proudly. This time last term, Neville would have been holding Trevor in his lap and feeding him the lettuce because he was ashamed of him and didn’t want anyone to see him.

“That I might have to go back to the Dursleys.”

Neville dropped his fork. It rang and clattered to the floor as he stared at Harry with wide, desperate eyes. “No! You can’t!”

“It’s okay. I don’t think it’s going to happen. Julian is probably overreacting.”

Neville took a deep, harsh breath, but he was still staring at Harry. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. The _best_ foster brother. You can’t go back to them.”

“Well, even if they got free, I don’t think it would happen. Your grandmother has custody and Dumbledore ignored my parents’ wills in the first place to put me with the Dursleys.”

“You _can’t_.”

Harry patted Neville’s hand, touched. Some people wouldn’t have liked him coming up and messing up their lives, especially the way Harry did it with standing up to Neville’s grandmother and scaring him that way. Harry wasn’t going to say it because he knew Neville wouldn’t agree, but in his opinion, _he_ was the one who had the best foster brother. “I promise, I wouldn’t.”

Golden lifted his head and put his chin on the table, as if he wanted to show how much he agreed with Harry. Neville calmed down when he saw Golden’s nod. “All right. I just—I couldn’t bear it if you went back to them, Harry.”

“I won’t. I do have to talk to Julian and find out why he thinks that I might, though.” Harry sighed. It was annoying, and confusing. How could the Wizengamot make one decision about his relatives, one Harry thought was too harsh in the first place, and then just change their minds like that?

Neville calmed down, but he didn’t smile again, even though he was eating a sandwich for lunch. Finally, he swallowed and asked, “You said that you had a private Defense session with Professor Quirrell today?”

Harry nodded and began eating mashed potatoes himself at a non-subtle nudge from Golden. “I think that he worries about me more than he says. And he’s going to start teaching me the Shield Charm.”

“That’s a fifth-year spell, Harry!”

“He still thinks I should learn it. Apparently he thinks people could start hexing me in the corridors soon.”

Neville gave an unhappy gulp. Then he nodded. “Well, d-do you think that you could teach it to me? I mean, when you know it, maybe next year, I know that I can’t master it right now—”

Harry beamed and said, “Sure.” He didn’t want to listen to Neville put himself down, but at least it was better than what Neville would probably have said before Christmas, which was that he could never learn it at all. “I just have to talk to Professor Quirrell and make sure that he’s all right with me teaching it to someone else.”

Neville nodded and changed the subject. “Defense has been pretty interesting lately, hasn’t it?”

*

“Mr. Potter? I wanted to speak to you.”

Harry halted and looked up in curiosity. He recognized the woman walking towards him, but only because she sat at the professors’ table. He knew that he’d never spoken to her before. “Hi, Professor Babbling.”

The Ancient Runes teacher studied him for a second. She had large blue eyes that stuck out of her face, and reminded Harry of how the faces of the boys Dudley squeezed by the neck had sometimes looked. But he blocked the memory out of his head even as he thought about it. It wasn’t something he wanted to remember.

Golden nudged him gently.

“I wanted to speak to you, Mr. Potter,” Professor Babbling repeated. She had a high pile of chestnut hair on her head and a huge bronze deer at her side—although Harry thought he remembered someone telling him that the deer was actually a wapiti. “I noticed that you had runes on the back of your familiar. But you are far too young to be taking Ancient Runes. So I didn’t want to wait two years to talk to you.”

Harry grinned. Professor Babbling was pretty straightforward, but he kind of liked that. “All right, Professor. So you wanted to know what the runes meant?”

“Yes, of course. I am teaching _Runes_. It would be _ridiculous_ for a student in the castle to be using runes that I do not understand.”

“Even if they come from natural defensive magic?”

“The runes are defensive?”

Harry nodded and gestured for Golden to turn his back so that Professor Babbling and her familiar could come over and get a better look. “Yes, Professor. See? I don’t know all of them yet, but I looked up a few, and there are runes of shielding, and calming, and—”

“Yes, but they interlock with _new_ shapes,” Professor Babbling interrupted him, bending over Golden and reaching out to touch his scales. Harry looked at Golden, but he cocked his neck at an angle that meant it was all right with him. “I have not seen those shapes before. They cannot be used to join runes that I am aware of. Can they, Bittersweet?”

Her wapiti stamped a hoof. Harry looked at him and saw that his antlers had curling and interlocked runes in the basic shapes. He couldn’t read them, but he thought at least a few of them looked like the runes that covered parts of Golden’s back.

“How did you make these runes?” Babbling continued, exploring Golden’s back with her hands while she raised her eyes to look at Harry. “How did you carve them on your familiar?”

“I didn’t,” Harry replied with a blink. Did people really think that? That he _carved_ them on Golden? That was so horrible that he shivered. Maybe it explained some of the odd looks that he got when Golden crawled around the castle? “Most of the magic I did before I came to Hogwarts was accidental. And really, Golden did most of it.”

“What did the other wizards you grew up with say when they saw them? Or did they help you?”

“Er, my relatives were Muggles, Professor. They couldn’t see my familiar.”

Babbling squinted hard at him, and her hands stopped moving on Golden’s back. Bittersweet stepped around Golden to sniff noses with him.

“So these just—appeared?” Babbling asked. “Without you realizing what you were doing at all? Then how did they get there?”

“I think Golden made them,” Harry pointed out, a little offended. He’d already _said_ that he didn’t have any idea what had happened to make the runes. He supposed it was strange for people to think a familiar was responsible for the runes, but still. Didn’t they have any respect for a golden familiar at all? “Why don’t you ask him? Or you can ask him and then I’ll translate his answers. Unless you speak Parseltongue, professor?”

“I don’t speak Parseltongue.” Professor Babbling sounded a little less aggressive. She turned back to the runes. “Ask him what the crescent moon mark that joins the two runes on his neck means.”

Harry listened to Golden’s answer, since of course Golden had understood the question perfectly. He supposed it would also take people time to get used to that, though. “He says that the mark is the natural one for joining those two runes, Professor.”

“But how did he figure it out? What does it _mean_?”

“Could you just ask him directly, Professor? It sounds like you’re talking about him as though he isn’t here, and he doesn’t like that.” Harry could see Golden’s tail starting to swish out of the corner of his eye.

Professor Babbling paused and then nodded. “Of course. How did he figure out the mark? The reason people don’t experiment with marks like this is because it’s impossible to draw it and join the runes without it being exactly right the first time, or you injure yourself.”

Harry wanted to ask how, but Golden was hissing the answer, so he listened to it and translated. “He said that he connects with the ambient magic, Professor. The ambient magic tells him the right mark to draw. He can see it in his mind’s eye, and then he can alter the scales so that they flow into the shape.”

“Remarkable,” Professor Babbling muttered. “Can you—I mean, _how_ did you know to have that connection to the ambient magic? Is it something that only golden familiars can do?”

Harry happily translated after that, because at least he had the feeling that Professor Babbling was coming to see Golden as a person she could ask questions like that of. He only wished it was so easy to convince everybody.

*

Narcissa smiled as she passed the letter she’d received across the table to Lucius. “Good news, dear. The Wizengamot is questioning the punishment that they gave the Potter boy’s relatives.”

“Why would that be _good_ news, though?” Lucius shook his head with a slight frown, and pushed Hecate’s chin out of the way as she dipped over his shoulder to suck up porridge from his bowl. “It was hard enough to convince the boy of their punishment as it was.”

“But it’s another blow to his credibility,” Narcissa said quietly. Some of it was the work of her ally, but she wasn’t about to tell Lucius that. He could know it when the deception was complete. “Question the punishment, and they’ll question the campaign that he’s mounting for power and to weaken the hierarchy.”

Lucius patted his chin delicately with his napkin. “That seems likely to work, but it’s also moving far too slowly for my liking.”

Narcissa smiled thinly. “Don’t worry. I have other measures in place to ensure that our son will never follow Potter.”

And one of those methods, she had to leave the breakfast table in order to write.

*

“Can you help me understand something?”

Hermione looked up from the library table where she and Regina were examining a map of the places where supposedly Forbidden Arts had been practiced in the world. Hermione was starting to think the book was fiction, though. “Yes?”

Draco sat down across from her. Kali promptly flew to greet Regina. Regina rubbed her nose along Kali’s wing. Draco sighed and looked only mildly disgusted.

“What was it like to grow up in the Muggle world with a familiar?” Draco asked quietly. “Is it true that Muggles can’t see them at all?”

Hermione smiled. Draco was questioning what he had been told! That had been all she had wanted people to do for years. She nodded. “They can’t. My parents thought it was a really persistent imaginary friend. They eventually accepted that I thought Regina was real, but they asked that I not talk about her in front of other people.” She held out her hand, and Regina ran over and sniffed at her fingers.

“That’s barbaric!”

“Any more barbaric than convincing people with tin and copper familiars that they can never really accomplish anything?”

Draco flushed. “I mean—I’ve never done that personally.”

“But you’ve been mean to Muggles and Muggleborns personally,” Hermione said, thinking she saw where Draco was coming from.

Draco nodded slowly. “And now that I think about it…” He trailed off, and Hermione let him finish talking in his own time. She still wasn’t sure that she would exactly say she and Draco were friends, but he was more interesting than that stupid book.

“I didn’t put anyone down who had tin or copper familiars,” Draco whispered. “I never actually _said_ the insults. I was always polite. But I was thinking the words. And I looked away from them or pretended I didn’t see them sometimes if they approached me and I thought they were going to ask for charity. That’s the way my parents taught me.”

Hermione nodded. “That’s something that could change.”

“What was it like in the Muggle world, though? Doesn’t it need to change _there_ , too? Isn’t it upsetting that your parents ignored you and thought Regina was imaginary?”

“Right now I just want to help Harry change the wizarding world.”

“But you didn’t answer my question.” Draco leaned forwards and stared at her.

Hermione looked down at the table where Regina was now rubbing her whiskers against her fingers. She’d always been able to feel that, and she’d been so heartbroken when she’d invited her mum and dad to pet Regina and they hadn’t been able to feel _anything_.

“I wish Muggles could see them,” she whispered. “Hear them. Feel them. _Something_. But they can’t, and I have no idea how to change that. Or the International Statute of Secrecy, either. I just want to change what I can.”

Draco nodded slowly. “Yeah. Okay. I understand.” He looked lost for a second, and Hermione frowned at him.

“Draco? Is everything all right?”

Draco nodded quickly and stood up. “I just wanted to ask that question. I have a letter to write.” He turned and walked away with Kali barely fluttering to his shoulder in time before he made it out of the library.

Hermione looked after him, worried, but Regina nuzzled her fingers again, and she nodded. Right. One thing she was trying to do was only being concerned about one challenge at a time. She would think about Draco and the Muggle world and trying to change things later.

Right now, they were working on understanding the Forbidden Arts.

*

Minerva rolled her eyes as she watched Malkin pawing at the ledger. “Yes, you ridiculous bit of bronze fluff, I found the right Palimpsest Charm.”

Malkin puffed up all his fur, the way he always did when she called him that, and which only made the name more fitting. Minerva petted him quickly and then opened the ledger to the page on Claire Jordan again, and that mysterious extra A Albus had written.

The Palimpsest Charm should, in theory, have been an easy solution to the problem of figuring out what Albus had written beneath his name, or what he had first written and then erased. The problem was that, without a precise time period named in the casting of the spell, the charm would erase _all_ of the ink on a page and prepare it for future writing, instead of merely erasing one layer. And Minerva had no idea how old Albus’s name was compared to anything else on the page.

Luckily, she had found a variant that meant she could focus on an individual word, instead of a time period.

She aimed her wand at the large A in front of Albus’s name and half-closed her eyes, repeating the incantation to herself before she spoke it. “ _Verbum rado_.”

Albus’s name shimmered and then peeled off the page as though someone had reached out and taken the skin off a grape. Underneath it was the word that had started with the second large letter A.

_Artificial._

Minerva stared at it in silence. Then she turned the pages of the ledger until she found another misplaced A and repeated, “ _Verbum rado._ ”

 _Artificial_.

And so said the next page with a large A, and the next, and the next.

The problem was, Minerva thought as she contemplated the changed pages numbly, that not every single wizard or witch described was one that Minerva had a Squib’s birth certificate for. Some seemed to be people that Albus had been suspicious of for no good reason, such as describing the bond between the human and their familiar as “unnatural.”

No, of course that wasn’t the real problem. It was one footnote to the larger problem.

_What the bloody hell does “Artificial” mean when applied to a familiar?_


	11. Artificiality

“Thank you for meeting with me, Harry.”

Harry nodded to Julian, his hand smoothing down Golden’s scales. They’d just come from an hour of practicing the Shield Charm with Professor Quirrell. Nothing had worked, though. Harry and Golden couldn’t get one spark to appear from the end of the holly wand.

Harry wondered if that meant he wasn’t as powerful as everyone said. He was okay with that. But if they needed him to cast some kind of strong magic and he couldn’t, what would that make people think about him?

“Are you all right, my lord?”

Harry rolled his eyes at Julian. Then again, that was probably why Julian had said that. “Yes, I’m fine. Worried that I don’t have as much magical strength as I thought, but other than that…” He sighed. “I just need to keep practicing. But why did you want to see me? Do you really think the Wizengamot is going to change the punishment for the Dursleys?”

“It’s one possibility. I’m more worried about what it says for the future. They’ve decided that they need to disregard you in one way or another. I’ve heard more than one comment that paying so much attention to a child is a bad idea, whether or not he has a golden familiar.”

Harry nodded. He had always known that was probably going to happen, so he wanted adults to work with him. “What do you think we should do?” He watched as Sarah jumped around, clutching at the tapestries on the walls. He and Julian usually met in one of Hogwarts’s dusty abandoned rooms, but it looked like this one used to be a bedroom for a professor or something.

Julian leaned forwards. “First of all, you need to make a proclamation about what you stand for.”

Harry eyed him. “Is that a good idea, if people are already distrusting me? I thought you’d say we had to move more slowly and pretend that we don’t really want to change anything.”

“I did think that, but…” Julian sighed and unfolded a square of parchment that had lain on the table next to him. “Read this.”

Harry did, frowning. It looked like it was a letter, but it read like it was copied from a book. “I don’t understand all of this,” he admitted, looking up. “Who is Morgana Omastros?”

“A witch two centuries ago who had a golden familiar,” Julian said with another sigh. “A cheetah, in her case. She exploited the Wizengamot and turned so many old allies against each other that some pure-blood families were destroyed completely. It took a long time for the Wizengamot to realize what was going on, because that reverence for golden familiars was so ingrained.”

Harry shook his head. “But if they remember her, why did they just give in and trust Dumbledore? And me, for that matter?”

“Because,” Julian said, slumping back into his chair and scowling at the wall, “there was a Seer, Cassandra Trelawney, who looked into what _would_ have been the future of those families years after Omastros was sent into exile. Don’t ask me how; I don’t understand Divination properly myself. She discovered that the families would have destroyed each other anyway, in an enormous war that also would have exposed our world to Muggles.”

“So there are people who think Omastros did the right thing?”

Julian nodded. “And some people who think Trelawney was lying, and some people who think it was all normal politics and Omastros’s enemies were doomed anyway if they couldn’t play the game well enough to avoid being manipulated.” He glanced at Harry. “Someone is reminding the Wizengamot of her at _exactly_ the wrong time.”

“Why is it the wrong time? What should I do?”

Julian turned the letter around and pointed to a paragraph near the end. Harry obediently looked at it, but looked up a second later with an embarrassed smile. “Sorry, I don’t know what ‘oneiromancy’ is.”

“ _It means Divination through dreams,_ ” Golden told him in Parseltongue just as Julian said, “Seeing the future through dreams. One of the methods that Cassandra Trelawney supposedly used to determine that Morgana Omastros acted for the greater good.” He folded up the paper again with precise movements of his fingers. “Dumbledore proclaimed the greater good, too.”

“Is that something I have to do, then?”

Julian shook his head. “No. I think it would be damaging for you to do it because Dumbledore tainted the slogan. But at the same time, whoever wrote this is pressuring the Wizengamot to remember what Omastros did, and promoting the interpretation that she really did do more good than harm.”

Harry thought he saw the problem now. “So saying I’m working for the greater good is a problem, but there are people who will get upset if I say I’m not.”

Julian nodded. “So. I can give you advice, but you’re the one who has to decide what to do.”

Harry pulled a face. He wished he wasn’t. It seemed he was going to make a mistake no matter what he did. But he had someone who would help him make the decision and who he trusted even more than Julian. He turned to Golden. “ _What do you think_?” he asked in Parseltongue. “ _Which one of these would be the best to do_?”

Golden thought about it, tilting his head this way and that. The runes on his back glittered. Professor Babbling still seemed to think there was something very strange about them, but Harry was content to translate for her and Golden and not study them as much as he could have. Politics and learning to cast a Shield Charm were taking all his concentration.

“ _Don’t say anything about the greater good at all_ ,” Golden finally decided. “ _Julian is right that the slogan is tainted. Instead, focus on greater freedom for everyone._ ”

“ _Isn’t that just another version of the greater good, though? Or at least some people are going to think that?_ ”

“ _Some people might think that, and you can’t stop them,_ ” Golden said, with a rippling motion of his neck. “ _But if you just say greater freedom, and then talk about nice, neutral examples like people needing to be free of manipulations like Dumbledore’s, people with silver familiars who oppose you, like the Malfoys, will have a harder time showing you as dangerous_.”

“ _You think they’re behind this?”_ Harry looked at the letter.

“ _Not all of it. But at least some of it._ ” Golden looped his neck over Harry’s shoulder and let his head dangle down next to his for a moment. “ _You don’t need to think that it’s going to cost you your friendship with Draco, you know. I think that he doesn’t know about this and probably wouldn’t want to follow them._ ”

“ _I know. It’s going to make things harder for him, though_.” Harry turned to Julian. His eyes were wide, and Sarah was sitting very still on his shoulder. “What’s wrong?” Harry asked. He had to make sure that he was looking at Julian so the words wouldn’t come out in Parseltongue.

“I…” Julian cleared his throat. “It is one thing to know that you can speak Parseltongue and another thing to hear it.”

“Oh.” Harry considered the other wizards he knew who could speak Parseltongue, like Voldemort and Salazar Slytherin. “So I shouldn’t do that in front of other people?”

“Maybe not as much as that.”

Harry nodded. “Okay. Anyway, Golden thinks it would be a good idea for me to talk about greater freedom.”

“Instead of the greater good?” Julian nodded, his mind obviously thinking about things that Harry hadn’t come up with. “Yes, that could work. Would you let me be in charge of writing the statement and getting it out to people?”

“Yes, please. Just show it to me before you send it out?”

“Of course, my lord.”

Harry sighed silently over the title and added, “Golden thinks the Malfoys are probably in charge of this. I know they don’t like the fact that I grew up in the Muggle world, and some of the things Mrs. Malfoy said made me think that she didn’t really want to give up her spot in the hierarchy, either.”

Julian’s mouth tightened. “That makes sense to me, unfortunately. The Malfoys have enough power and money that we’ll have to move slowly to take them on.”

Harry nodded. “What’s the first thing we should do?”

*

Minerva closed her eyes. She had submerged herself in warm, soapy water for the past thirty minutes, and still she felt as if a thin layer of dirt and maggots covered her skin.

She knew now what Albus had been doing, or at least what he had been noting. And she wished she could simply turn a Memory Charm on herself.

The books on the Forbidden Arts hadn’t been in the library, but on the shelves in the Headmaster’s office. Once, Minerva might have applauded that caution; after all, it was important to keep the books away from students who might have sought to use the magic for petty grudges, not realizing the severe consequences of it, but one would also not want to destroy knowledge.

Now, she feared what it meant that Albus had wanted those tomes always within reach.

She opened her eyes as claws scraped on the tile of the bathroom, and Malkin leaped up on a shelf beside the tub. Eying the water as if it might spring up and eat him, he patted softly at her shoulder with a paw.

Minerva turned her cheek into his touch, sighing. The words cut through her mind, ones she truly wouldn’t be able to forget unless she did use that _Obliviate_.

_The nature of Squibhood is not absolute. Those born as Squibs have the potential for magic, and why should they be limited and denied full citizenship in our world because of lack of a familiar? Those who love humans more than animals have devised a solution._

Minerva shuddered. Malkin curled as close as he could to her, purring.

_There are procedures by which one might vivisect a familiar, or parts of several familiars, and combine those parts into a new whole…_

Minerva swallowed harshly, and forced herself to stop thinking of the book. There had been an _illustration_ on one page that—

No. She would not think of it.

She raised her hand and ran it gently down Malkin’s spine. He twitched, objecting to her wet fingers, but didn’t move away and didn’t cease purring. Minerva closed her eyes, because otherwise she would weep.

How _could_ someone sacrifice pieces of their soul that way? How _could_ they think of their familiars as “only” animals?

Malkin’s purr grew louder. Minerva gave a desperate gasp and opened her eyes. She still had things to discover, such as what would happen to a familiar with a “piece” sacrificed, whether it would affect the color of that familiar –and if so, what would happen when someone else noticed—and how the people who made the sacrifice bound the artificial familiar to the witch or wizard who had been born a Squib.

She already suspected what she would find, however.

 _They fuck with their souls. And Albus at least suspected this and noted it, but_ let it go on.

_This cannot stand._

*

“Put some _effort_ into it, Mr. Potter!”

Quirinus watched as the Potter boy flung his wand forwards, his eyes almost closed, and at his side the golden snake reared, his scales shining. The light that emerged from the tip of Potter’s wand was a dusty, flickering thing, but still more than Quirinus had thought he could achieve after only a few weeks of lessons.

Quirinus relaxed. It really did seem that Potter was well on his way to mastering a Shield Charm.

Alanna rubbed her nose against his cheek, and Quirinus stroked gently down her spine, digging in with the tips of his fingers. She relaxed. Quirinus sighed. He knew what was wrong, but at least at the moment, he could do nothing but reassure her when she expressed discomfort.

They had both been possessed for so long that they had become almost used to it. Oh, not the pain and the horrible sensation of having a spirit familiar drifting around inside Alanna’s body, but enough that it felt wrong to stand on their own, and they wanted a protective shield of more powerful magic encased around them at all times.

Quirinus _did_ want to make up for what he had done wrong. But his offer to give the Shield Charm lessons to Potter wasn’t all selfless. The sooner the boy had full access to the power that was his by birthright, the sooner he could extend that protection to his followers.

Most of the time, any family into which a golden wizard had been born would have trained him more than this, but then again, Potter had grown up with Muggles. Quirinus was doing his part for the future of the wizarding world by educating him, too.

“Can I try it again, Professor Quirrell? I think I can do better.”

Alanna tensed her haunches, and Quirinus hesitated. Then he said, “Only if that is your last attempt, Mr. Potter. I don’t want you exhausting yourself.”

The boy nodded, and closed his eyes. Beside him, Golden reared up again, but this time he didn’t sway back and forth. Quirinus could almost see the flow of magical strength from the familiar to his wizard, although _truly_ seeing it was impossible for anyone so far beneath Harry in the hierarchy as he was.

Harry grunted once, and then a shield lanced into being in front of him. It was thick for only moment, before it thinned and turned transparent and faded out of sight, but Quirinus found himself catching his breath.

“Excellent, Mr. Potter!”

“Aw, I didn’t get to see it,” the boy said, opening his eyes. “But it was good, right?” He then laughed as his familiar hissed something to him in Parseltongue.

Quirinus still flinched from the sound of the language, but the Dark Lord’s possession had left him with a little understanding. Golden had said something like, _Do you not trust the other wizard’s eyes?_

“Of course I do, Golden,” Potter said in English, which confirmed Quirinus’s translation, and rubbed his cheek against his snake’s head before he turned to Quirinus. “Should I go work on this in private, sir?”

“Yes,” Quirinus said, watching in some bemusement as the boy gathered up his schoolbooks and satchel and hurried out of the room. Golden glided gracefully after him.

Quirinus took his chair and stared blankly at the wall, for all that it was only a few minutes before he had to prepare for his next class. Alanna hopped from his shoulder to his knee and held up her paws to rest on his hands.

“Yes,” Quirinus whispered to her. “Perhaps I do not need to toughen him up as much as I first believed.”

Quirinus had thought the child so soft that learning the Shield Charm had been a desperate first step, an attempt to try and keep him safe while the whole weight of the world was poised to fall on him. But even then, Quirinus had assumed he was trying to hold back an avalanche.

However, if only because of the child’s joy and cheerful decisions to do things like accept lessons from a man who had once tried to kill him…

_That is its own kind of strength._

And Quirinus was no longer so hopeless.


	12. Sacrifices

_The main problem with knowing what I now know,_ Minerva thought, _is that I have to choose my confidants very carefully._

She sighed as the door to Amelia Bones’s office opened and the woman nodded her in, face blank and neutral. It was the tiger at her side whose tail was lashing.

Not that Minerva even knew for sure if Madam Bones was the right choice. She had the politics and the grudge against Dumbledore that would be needed, but she tended to charge ahead and think the best solution to problems was to be as open as possible. Minerva did not think that would be the right solution here.

_Not until we understand how widespread the problem is, at least._

“How can I help you, Minerva?”

Taking a moment to adjust the seat cushion on the enormous wooden chair beneath her, Minerva took a deep breath and passed over the birth certificates and the copied ledger pages that she’d brought with her. “First, I want you to take a close look at these and tell me that I’m not imagining something.”

Amelia adjusted the glasses on her nose and spent a long, silent few moments flipping through the pages. Phantom stood up so that he could rest his front paws on the desk and read over her shoulder. Malkin leaped onto the back of Minerva’s chair. Minerva stroked him, listened to his purring, and tried to calm her fraying nerves.

“I see the discrepancies. But I don’t understand where they came from. Are the Ministry’s records shoddy? Or is it the notes Albus was keeping on his interviews?”

“Neither,” Minerva said quietly, and this time handed over copies of the relevant pages from the books on the Forbidden Arts.

Amelia stiffened at once, her eyes darting up to Minerva. Phantom filled the office with his rumbling growl, and dropped to all fours to glide around the desk. Minerva held as still as she could, ignoring the impulse to cower before a larger familiar than her own and before someone higher on the hierarchy.

“Where did you get these? How long have you been hoarding them?” Amelia’s voice was quiet.

“I found them in Albus’s office,” Minerva said. She forced herself to reach back and smooth down some of Malkin’s raised fur. “He was the one hoarding them. And I would like you to read what they say, and consider the importance of the word _Artificial_ that Albus put at the bottom of some of those records.”

Amelia gave her one more distrustful glance, and then called Phantom back behind the desk with a jerk of her fingers. Her head bowed as she read over the pages. Phantom rumbled and reared up on the other side.

Minerva saw the moment when Amelia’s hand twisted to clamp over her mouth instead. Her shoulders heaved, and she obviously fought the impulse to stand and run to the loo. Minerva relaxed. Malkin leaped down into her lap and sat, although he kept an eye on Phantom.

“You think…” Amelia let her voice trail off. “These people who were born Squibs conducted the sacrifices to give themselves a familiar?”

Minerva shook her head. “I doubt it, considering that they entered Hogwarts as children with those familiars. But I think their families did. There is one particular family, the Medwyns, who have been behaving most strangely around me. And Claire Jordan, the woman with the tin mare whose file I placed on top there, is related to them.”

Amelia stared at the files again. “I wonder why Albus made notes on them, but never alerted anyone as to what they were,” she breathed. “Was he hoping to use them somehow?”

Minerva hesitated. Unfortunately, she did it long enough for Amelia to glance up and catch her at it.

“Minerva.”

Minerva tried not to resent the tone of command. Amelia had been trained to interact with the bronze-born like that, and her long tenure in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement would only have confirmed it. “I think that he was hoping to use them, yes. Perhaps blackmail them with what he knew. But there is another possibility that I’ve been thinking of. It’s—dreadful, Amelia. And I don’t have any _proof._ Only suspicion.”

Amelia made a series of motions with her wand that caused Minerva’s throat to tighten and her temples to throb. Then the sensation of suffocation relaxed, and Minerva knew what had happened. Amelia had set up a series of powerful privacy wards that it was unlikely anyone could break through.

“I would still like to know what this suspicion is.”

Minerva glanced at her hands and spread them over Malkin’s spine, hearing his encouraging purr. “I wondered if Albus had those books, and some of the notes I found in the ones I didn’t show you, because his own familiar was artificial.”

The silence that spread out around them was so appalled that Minerva was afraid to look at Amelia again. Even now, with Albus trapped in the Dream Labyrinth and his crimes widely-recognized, there were few corners of their society where such words could have been spoken.

“Have you told anyone else that you think this?” Amelia’s voice was a croak. Phantom turned and rubbed his head against her shoulder.

“No. And as I said, it’s only a suspicion. I haven’t found anything that would make me think it was true.”

“Then hold it to yourself for now, Minerva. And even—even if it was true, what would it matter now? Albus is inside the Dream Labyrinth. He couldn’t come out until he was thoroughly changed in any case.”

Amelia seemed to be talking herself down from some sort of ledge. Minerva flinched and then offered the only caution that she could think of. “The Forbidden Arts books say that an artificial familiar can only ever be made of a low level. Even if someone cuts up a bronze familiar, they can never make a silver one. Most of the artificial familiars are tin ones. There _might_ be a few copper.”

Amelia peered at her. “What is your point?”

“ _How_ did Albus make a golden familiar, if he made one?”

Amelia sat rigid. Then she shook her head and murmured, “This is another reason not to repeat your suspicions, Minerva. Even if what you were saying _is_ true…you would have to reveal a vast knowledge of illegal magic simply to hint about it to another human being.”

“I wanted to present my fears to you, nonetheless. You are in the best position to do something about them.”

“As you yourself said, it’s impossible.”

Minerva swallowed hard enough that Malkin began purring at her in comfort. Minerva ran her fingers down his neck as she stood. “Of course you’re right, Amelia. I only hope that I’ll see Albus again before I die, and that he’ll be a changed man.”

“Trust the Dream Labyrinth, Minerva.” Amelia seemed to relax again now that the hard part of the conversation was behind them, and smiled benevolently at her. “I can’t promise that he’ll ever come out, but he certainly won’t escape, and he won’t be the same twisted soul that he was when he entered.”

 _Twisted soul._ That was exactly what Minerva was afraid of, and what Amelia didn’t seem to take seriously.

She left the Ministry with a heaviness in her steps that hadn’t been there when she entered. Yet, at the same time, she tried to convince herself that Amelia was most likely right. Didn’t the fact that there was no way to create a golden familiar with the Forbidden Arts prove itself? If there _was_ a way, Voldemort doubtless would have found it. And others down the centuries would have, and golden-born wizards and witches would be much more common than they had been.

But the weight was in her stomach anyway, and when Malkin jumped to her shoulder again, he might have been colored lead rather than bronze.

*

“You are progressing incredibly well with the Shield Charm, Mr. Potter.”

Harry grinned at Professor Quirrell and Alanna, who seemed to have relaxed a lot lately and would sit on the floor next to Professor Quirrell now as they practiced. “Does that mean that you’re going to start teaching me some other magic, sir?”

Professor Quirrell looked at his familiar, and they seemed to talk silently. Then Professor Quirrell said, “Yes. I think we should begin with the Blasting Curse.”

“Does that hurt people badly if it lands?” Harry asked. He was a little wary about learning offensive magic like that. He wanted to defend himself and his friends, but he didn’t want to _kill_ people.

“It can,” Professor Quirrell said, winding his fingers together under his chin as he watched Harry. “That is one reason you should always aim it at the walls or floors around your intended target, not right at them.”

Harry glanced at Golden, who bobbed his head a little, confirming his understanding of the spell. “All right, I can do that,” Harry said, and faced his professor. “What do I need to do first?”

“You will need to learn the muscle memory, and the incantation, which is _Confringo_ ,” Professor Quirrell said. He waved his wand for a moment, and conjured a large slab of wood that he leaned against the wall. “This is what you will aim at.”

Harry nodded, shuddering a little as he imagined what a spell with a name like that could do to a person. Would it blast someone to just some blood and bones, maybe?

Dudley used to brag about beating up kids so badly that they looked like that. It just made Harry resolve even more not to be like his cousin.

“This is the wand motion,” Professor Quirrell said, showing him. “I want you to mimic it, first without drawing on any magic from your familiar, and then drawing on it. We should see what you can do with your muscles before you begin to put all the power you can command behind it.”

It was still strange to Harry that some people saw him as powerful, when all his childhood he’d thought the things he and Golden could do were strange. But he carefully imitated the movement the professor showed him. Golden swayed beside him, eyes bright and sparkling.

“Now aim your wand at the wood,” Professor Quirrell said, stepping carefully out of the way. He had Alanna in his arms, Harry saw when he looked. “Perform the movement I showed you, say the incantation, and imagine the wood blowing apart. And make sure that you are drawing on your familiar for magic at the same time.”

“ _All_ at the same time?” Harry asked in dismay, but Golden nudged his head against Harry’s arm and quieted him. He nodded and faced the slab of wood. He didn’t hate it, but he would just have to imagine it blowing apart anyway.

So he slashed his wand down and said, “ _Confringo_!” as loudly as he could. At the same time, he reached out for the bond he had with Golden.

There was a splintering noise that actually seemed to come from the air in front of him instead of the wood, and then part of the slab fell away, cut along the bottom. Harry blinked. “That wasn’t where I was aiming, sir. Was it supposed to do that?”

Professor Quirrell didn’t say anything. Harry turned around and found him standing with his back against the wall. His face was very pale and he was holding Alanna very tight.

“Sir?” Harry asked in concern. He didn’t want to remind the man of something to do with Voldemort, but he probably had. Not that Harry really knew if Voldemort had used this spell on wood or not.

Professor Quirrell looked at the cut piece of wood for a second, then took a deep breath and stood up. “Very good for a first start, Harry. While this effect is unexpected, I think you were trying to imagine destroying the door, correct?” Harry nodded, and Professor Quirrell nodded back. “Well, next time imagine an explosion instead. Cutting a piece of wood can indeed destroy it, but you don’t want your imagination to make the incantation unworkable.”

“Wait. So your imagination can make spells behave differently when they come out of your wand? Brilliant!”

Professor Quirrell looked like he was either about to make a face or burst out laughing. “Please do not experiment with that yet, Harry. Let’s concentrate on having the spells do what they’re supposed to do first.”

Harry nodded obediently. “But I’m having a hard time picturing what the Blasting Curse does without seeing it, sir. Could you do it once for me first, so that I can have a better image in my head?”

Professor Quirrell again gave him a strange look, like he thought Harry was making fun of him or something. Harry just stood there, because he wasn’t, and Golden hooked his head over Harry’s shoulder and watched Professor Quirrell, too.

That seemed to decide Professor Quirrell, oddly enough. He relaxed and murmured, “Ever the surprise, Mr. Potter.” Then he waved his arm as he faced the piece of wood. “Move out of the way. You don’t want to be caught by the shrapnel.”

The word “shrapnel” decided Harry, and he hastily stepped back. Professor Quirrell seemed to calm himself down with a few seconds of breathing before he slashed his arm forwards and bellowed, “ _Confringo_!” Alanna gave a sudden hop next to him at the same time.

The slab of wood exploded. Harry ducked with one arm over his head, and at the same time became aware that Golden was radiating light next to him. Harry smiled at him as some small pieces of wood bounced from the light. “We have to learn more about how to shield at the same time.”

Golden nodded emphatically, looking at the little pieces of wood all over the floor.

“Sir?” Professor Quirrell turned around from dusting off his robes and looked at Harry. “Does—does anyone ever use this on a person?”

“Sometimes. In war.”

Harry nodded. Well, it was good to know and prepare himself for. _He_ wouldn’t want to use it on a person, but he had to be ready in case it happened in front of him. “Can I try again?” he asked.

Professor Quirrell conjured another slab of wood in answer. Harry moved forwards and let one hand rest on Golden’s back.

“In time, you will have to do it without touching your familiar.”

“Yes, sir.” Harry kept his attention focused on the wood, though. He was going to make it explode. He could picture it a lot better now that he’d seen someone doing it and he wouldn’t be thinking about cutting it. “ _Confringo_!” he shouted, and gestured with his wand at the same time as he pressed down hard on Golden’s back.

The slab of wood exploded—on one corner, the same one that he’d cut with the last piece. It was a tiny explosion. Harry frowned a little as he watched some of the dust falling down. That wasn’t really the same thing as Professor Quirrell had done.

On the other hand, he supposed he had to start small at first, and then work his way up to the effects.

Professor Quirrell cleared his throat. Harry looked up, and found the man watching him from a distance back near the wall.

“I didn’t do it right,” Harry said, because he felt he had to say something.

“That is still a _very_ good beginning, Mr. Potter.”

Harry smiled. He liked it when his other professors praised him, too, but it felt especially good when Professor Quirrell did it, because he had been possessed for so long and then had been hurt in the ritual that Harry had helped with. “Thanks, sir.” He faced the slab of wood again and raised his wand.

He was going to master this. He would use it to protect himself and only hurt someone if he really had to, but he wanted to do well. He wanted to prove that he wasn’t just someone that everybody looked up to because of the color of his familiar but someone who could really _do_ something.

He wanted to be strong.


	13. Call for Freedom

 

“Did you mean what you said in the papers about greater freedom for everyone, Potter?”

Harry turned around curiously. He’d expected Wychard Medwyn to stay away from him, since he was probably angry about Curtis meeting with Harry and Golden. But instead, the older Slytherin boy had come right up to him in the middle of the Great Hall, just when Harry and Neville were getting ready to leave for Potions.

“Did you have something you wanted to say to Harry, Medwyn?” Cedric had stood up at the same time, and now he was in between Harry and Medwyn. His bronze snow leopard familiar snarled eagerly next to him.

“Yes, to him, not you, Diggory.” Medwyn gave Cedric a hostile look and stepped around Cedric. “Did you mean what you said about greater freedom?”

“Yes, I did,” Harry said, although Neville was looking at him worriedly, and across the Great Hall, Draco was shaking his head. Harry took heart from the fact that Hermione was just watching, her hand on Regina’s back.

“Then you can _start_ by leaving Hogwarts.”

“Huh?”

Medwyn had been grinning like he expected Harry to get angry, but now his grin faltered, and he squinted at Harry. “Well, if you really don’t want to control people, then you _have_ to leave Hogwarts. Because if you stay here, you would be controlling them with your spreading magic.”

“No, you have to concentrate to use spreading magic. I wouldn’t do that.”

“You _have_ to leave!”

“No, I don’t think so.” Harry supposed this was probably meant to get him angry or make him look bad, but he didn’t know how. Was Medwyn just a distraction and someone else was sneaking up behind him? Golden, who was watching Medwyn and Curtis, would alert him of that, though. “Spreading magic influencing other people would be wrong. So I won’t do that. That means I don’t have to leave Hogwarts.”

Medwyn’s face was red. He took a step back and appealed to the people around him. “Who here thinks that Potter is wrong and he’s really using his spreading magic? Just like Albus Dumbledore did!”

“I would _remind_ you that doubting the word of a wizard with a golden familiar has been a dueling offense in the past, Mr. Medwyn.”

That was Professor Snape, standing up at the Head Table and looking at Medwyn as if he should be bitten by Shadowstriker. Next to him, Professor Quirrell and Alanna were both watching with big eyes. Harry noticed how tense Headmistress McGonagall was, but before he could look at the other teachers, Medwyn called his attention back by laughing nastily.

“That’s another thing that needs to change!” Medwyn turned around and spread his arms. “How many people saw Potter’s announcement about standing for greater freedom for the ‘common’ witch and wizard in the paper this morning? How many people think he’s full of shite?”

“ _Language,_ Mr. Medwyn,” said the Headmistress sharply. “Also a detention to be served with me this evening.”

“I just asked a question! You didn’t give anyone a chance to answer!”

“And ten points from Slytherin for cheek,” Headmistress McGonagall finished. “If anyone wants to answer your question, then they may, but you will not verbally attack a younger student in the Great Hall like this!”

Harry glanced around. Most of the other students didn’t seem to know what to make of what was going on. Neville seemed to be holding his breath next to Harry. Harry sharply nudged him, and Neville forced himself to release the breath and clutched Trevor close nervously.

“I’d like to say something.”

Draco was standing up, and Kali was perched on his shoulder, stretching her wings out. Some people turned around. Harry thought they probably paid attention to Draco because he had a silver familiar, but at least they were listening.

“What, Malfoy?” Medwyn demanded.

“I don’t think that Harry would ever use his spreading magic, and he really does mean his call for more freedom.” Draco touched Kali’s head and ended her hissing at one of the Slytherins next to him whose familiar was glaring at her. Now both his and Kali’s heads faced in the same direction, looking at Medwyn, and Harry had to admit it looked impressive. “It’s all there if you listen to him. He wants people with tin and copper familiars to have the freedom that people with bronze and silver familiars do—the freedom to be respected and have their opinions listened to. And he wants silver and bronze people to have more freedom—”

“How? That doesn’t sound like freedom to me!” Medwyn folded his arms, and Curtis gave a nervous flutter next to him.

“Maybe we can have actual _friendships_ with people that have different color familiars,” Draco almost drawled, “instead of spending all our time thinking about what color they have and whether we can actually be friends with them or not. I know I’m pretty tired of thinking about my status all the time, myself.”

“Like you have to think about your status, when you’re silver!” Medwyn was glancing around. He seemed to sense that he was losing support, Harry decided. “Isn’t anyone else concerned about this? About spreading magic and the way that Potter is going to control all of us? Professor Snape? What about you?”

Harry almost choked. Of course Medwyn couldn’t know that Professor Snape had sworn a special kind of oath to Harry, since they were keeping that quiet, but it was a pretty amusing mistake to make.

“I think that you should go back to your seat, Mr. Medwyn.” Professor Snape’s voice was completely detached. He really was a good actor, Harry thought, comparing that to the way the professor sounded when they talked together. “If what you say is true, in time there will be a way to demonstrate it.”

_And he’s pretty good at making it sound like he might agree with someone he doesn’t agree with, too._

Medwyn gave a frown that was frankly a little ridiculous, but nodded and turned and walked back to his seat. Curtis gave a nervous glance at Golden and then stalked after him.

“ _They are strange about you,_ ” Golden said. Remembering how Julian had told him that he shouldn’t speak Parseltongue as much in front of other people, Harry just nodded, and then gave the last bit of his apple to Golden before he and Neville left.

*

“I wish I were as brave as you.”

Harry looked up. He and Neville were doing their homework in the common room, after Harry had got back from a lesson with Professor Quirrell, and then letting Professor Babbling interpret some of the runes on Golden’s back. “What do you mean, Neville? You’ve been pretty brave lately.”

“But you just stood there in front of the entire Great Hall this morning and didn’t get upset when Medwyn accused you.” Neville sighed and leaned back in the huge yellow armchair, staring into the fire. “I don’t think I’ll ever be that brave.”

“You could work on it, if you want. I mean, I’m mostly that brave because I didn’t think anything was really going to happen in the middle of the Great Hall. Medwyn would be stupid to attack me there.”

“But I wouldn’t be thinking about that. I would just be thinking of how he _could._ And Curtis is a lot bigger than Trevor, and he has clawed feet. He could attack poor Trevor, and he wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“Does that happen a lot? I mean, familiars attacking each other?” So far, Harry hadn’t seen that many familiars interacting outside of the sessions he spent with his friends and when other familiars wanted to speak with Golden. They were friends or not according to whether their humans were friends, but they would touch noses briefly or wings or whatever was appropriate to them and then leave.

“No, but it _could._ And the Medwyn family has an aggressive reputation.”

“They do?”

“Of course they do! They’ve always—” Abruptly Neville turned red. “I’m sorry. I always forget that you didn’t grow up in the wizarding world. You pretend it so well.”

Harry just shrugged and smiled. “If I pretended that well, I probably wouldn’t get so many people upset about me having a golden familiar and not knowing the rules for having one. What about the Medwyns?”

Neville eyed him for a second, but then nodded. “Just that the Medwyns had Squibs born in their family for a really long time. They got defensive about it. Of course, no one really knows what causes Squibs, but sometimes it’s inbreeding, or the way that the family treats the child. And recently, they don’t have Squibs anymore, but they’ve got even angrier. They randomly challenge people to duels. They try to sue people. They make false claims and tell the Aurors to arrest people who have never done anything to them.”

“So that’s why you’re afraid Curtis will attack Trevor.”

“Yeah.” Neville leaned back and let Trevor climb into his palms and sit there, trembling a little. At least Trevor didn’t do that anymore when he talked to Golden, Harry thought. “Maybe Medwyn wouldn’t attack you, because you’re powerful and he saw that you wouldn’t back down. But he could attack me.”

Harry thought about it. “Then we should find a spell that will let me know when you’re being attacked. Well, not just me. Hermione and Draco and Ron and the others too.”

“What?”

“So we can come and find you if we hear the warning, of course. I’m not going to let you try and stand up to Medwyn alone.”

Neville seemed to have something sticky in his throat that prevented him from swallowing. Harry looked away patiently until he got control of it. Then Neville whispered, “Thank you, Harry. You don’t know what it means to me to have friends.”

“And a brother. Don’t forget that.”

Neville’s soft smile said he hadn’t.

*

“And why are you interested in monitoring charms, Mr. Potter?” From the expression Professor Quirrell wore, he seemed to think that wasn’t important enough for someone with a golden familiar to learn or something.

“One of my friends is worried that the boy who stood up and accused me yesterday could attack him.” Harry looked calmly at the professor. “I told him that I would learn a spell to let me know if someone attacked him, sir.”

Professor Quirrell looked faintly exasperated, in the way Harry was becoming used to people looking. “Has it occurred to you that you should tell a professor if something like that happens?”

“Well, no, sir,” Harry said slowly. “Because my friend said the Medwyns are aggressive, and he was worried about being attacked even though he knows that he’s at school surrounded by professors. That says to me that the Medwyns are aggressive all the time, and no one really stands up and does anything about it.”

“They would if he attacked you.”

“But other students deserve to feel safe too, sir.”

Professor Quirrell’s expression crimped up a bit, so Harry thought he looked like Aunt Petunia when she saw mud on the kitchen floor. Then he motioned for Harry to sit down in the chair in front of them, which mostly they used for target practice. Harry did, and looked at him, while Alanna hopped over and leaned against Golden for a second.

“I have warned you before about what others would think when they found out what kind of magic you are practicing,” Professor Quirrell said in a soft voice. “Well, they will be even more upset if they think that you are making challenges to the way the school is run.”

Harry stared at him. “So—students being in danger is the way it’s _supposed_ to be?”

Professor Quirrell shook his head. “Not that. Simply that if you show up to protect other students who are in danger, and it becomes obvious that it was because of magic too advanced for your years, the accusations hurled against you will make what Medwyn said look like hot air.”

“I can’t accept that,” Harry said. “I just _can’t_ accept that, sir. I can’t let my foster brother be in danger all the time because of what someone might think. And why should the Medwyns be able to get away with attacking and bullying people? Just because they’ve always done it that way?”

Professor Quirrell hesitated. “The student who is worried about being attacked is your foster brother?”

“Neville Longbottom. Yes, sir. And he’s even in my House, too! Professor Sprout says Hufflepuffs ought to fight for each other.”

For the first time, Professor Quirrell looked as if he might be thinking. “I don’t believe Mr. Longbottom has anything to worry about,” he finally said. “The Medwyns have no one with a silver familiar in their family. They would leave someone that has one alone.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t believe that. Medwyn attacked me earlier today, and I have a golden one.”

Professor Quirrell shut his eyes. “I am not saying that that is acceptable, or that you should simply leave your brother to be bullied. What I am saying is that you want to make changes in the hierarchy, but you cannot move too far or too fast. Better to let some things go for now and build up your power base slowly. Don’t put them on the defensive by showing _already_ how powerful and skilled you are. This is a minor affair. Save the revelation of your power for a distant time when you’ll need it more.”

Harry leaned forwards a little. “Do you believe that Neville is going to get hurt, sir?”

“I can’t say for sure—”

“I didn’t say for sure, sir. I just want your best guess. Is Medwyn going to attack Neville? Or would the Medwyns attack someone else who’s important to me, or me? Even if it’s in a different way than accusing me in the middle of the Great Hall?”

Professor Quirrell waited for a long time. But Harry could wait, too. He had used to wait all the time in the cupboard with Golden. Finally, Professor Quirrell said, “I can’t rule out the possibility.”

Harry nodded firmly. “Then please teach me the monitoring charm, sir. And I’ll come up with some other reason for why I would show up when Neville was in danger. I can say that Golden is keeping an eye on him for me.”

Professor Quirrell raised his eyebrows. “Would anyone believe that?”

“People believe all sorts of stupid things about wizards with golden familiars. I think they would, sir.”

“That is something else that might be turned against you.”

“Then anything could be,” Harry said. He felt like he was a million years old. He was so tired. “I just—I can’t let someone suffer bullying because of something that might not even happen, sir. The Medwyns are stupid enough that they’re already attacking me openly. And they could spread lies about me, but they’re already doing that. Just keeping Neville safe is going to make a huge difference for me and him, but I don’t think it will for them.”

Professor Quirrell kept on thinking about it for a while. Harry kept on looking at him. He would go and get Professor Snape to teach him the monitoring charm if he had to. He just wanted to keep working with the professor who had already shown that he was good at teaching Harry defensive spells.

“Very well,” Professor Quirrell said at last. He hesitated, then added, “And it is dangerous, and I cannot promise that all rumors will be put to rest as easily as Mr. Medwyn’s accusation of you using spreading magic was.

“I understand, sir—”

“But I am proud to see someone who has this power in our society using it to defend others.”

Harry smiled, and felt the way that Golden leaned against him, heavy and soft and warm. “Thank you, sir.” He didn’t add that it was the _right_ thing to do, because he was pretty sure that Professor Quirrell already knew, and Golden definitely knew, but that was the way he felt.


End file.
